


remember me (when i'm reborn)

by ZenzaNightwing



Series: no grave (hold my body) [4]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Badass Zuko (Avatar), Body Horror, Child Abuse, Child Soldiers, Childhood Trauma, Gen, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Death, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Mixed Media, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Zuko (Avatar), Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Spirit Shenanigans, Spirit Zuko, Spirits, Unreliable Narrator, Worldbuilding, honestly its part philosophy part humor part dragon, oops i made my ocs too powerful and now they want a fucked up past too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-17
Updated: 2020-11-06
Packaged: 2020-12-21 00:27:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 131,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21065720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZenzaNightwing/pseuds/ZenzaNightwing
Summary: High in the halls of ice and wintry waters, an iceberg cracks.They tend to do that. It’s hardly a unique occurence. Every day, babies are born, good men die, fires start, and ice breaks.It is natural. It is meant to be.(It’s a sign)The Avatar wakes in a changed world a century later. An almost three year search comes to fruition.It is all different, though. Years of rumor and story have been allowed to flourish.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Hozier for making bombass music that makes really good titles.
> 
> I can only hope to keep this helltrain going. I have ideas I would very much like to execute. We'll see how far along with them I get.

High in the halls of ice and wintry waters, an iceberg cracks. 

They tend to do that. It’s hardly a unique occurrence. Every day, babies are born, good men die, fires start, and ice breaks.

It is natural. It is meant to be.

(It’s a sign)

The only difference with this particular glacier is what it contains, and what is breaking it.

A hundred year old secret in the south.

And a girl, balanced on the prow of a canoe, arms outstretched and face scrunched in concentration, blue eyes glaring and glaring as if they can burn straight through the chunk of ice.

“Are you sure you aren’t just seeing things?” her brother complains, throwing his head to the side to shake off the frost that forms stubbornly on his eyebrows.

“I know what I saw, Sokka,” the girl snaps back. “There’s a shadow in there! What if it’s a secret? What if it’s a Spirit? We’ll have no idea until we break it open and look.”

Sokka scoffs but makes no motion to stop her. “If you break that thing, the entire ice flow is going to change,” he reminds her. “If we block our own river because you want to crack open some ice to get the fun _ shiny thing _ inside that’s probably just some old dirt, I will put you on kid-wrangling duty.”

“First off, it’s called warrior training, which I never even went through,” she reminds him, tilting her head and tracking the small fissures. “Second off, I’ll just clear it out again. Benefits to having a sister who can, oh, you know, _ bend water_. My skills don’t translate well to tiny tots learning how to stab things good, they translate into telling water to do stuff like _ this_.”

She moves her arms in a grand sweeping motion, fingers crawling like snowmelt as her arm mimics pounding sheets of rain. She focuses on the dead center of the iceberg and the cracks forming.

_ Water, _says her right pinky.

_ Water_, agrees her left thumb.

_ You are liquid_, says the loose motion of her elbow.

_ And flowing_, soothes the gentle roll of her shoulder.

_ Dripping, _ her sharp dip toward the ground orders.

_ And dropping_, concurs the widening of her stance.

_ The Pull, _ the straightening of her spine demands.

_ The Push_, the harsh shove of her hands commands.

_ You are water_, her body announces.

** _Move._ **

The ice obliges. The words made from her motions are far from the poetry of the masters, and far from a warrior’s experienced shorthand. They are simple words and basic verbs tossed together into something mostly understandable. They are clumsily made, but they are commands nonetheless.

The water melts in a shaky line and the iceberg cracks in half like a geode, split to reveal the pretty, colorful treasure within. The halves of the iceberg crash to the water, and the girl frantically twists her arms, trying to slow it, but her form and words are sloppy and unpracticed.

** _Stop!_ ** Her body screams.

_ No, _ the water denies, and smashes onward. Stop is not a word that water recognizes. Water does not stop - it must be stopped.

Freezing cold washes over the boat and nearly knocks the girl from the prow. Sokka yelps and hides his face in his parka sleeve.

“Katara!” he yells, muffled by the sleeve. “Dry us off before we freeze to death!”

Katara shivers and sways back up to her feet from where the water knocked her down into in the canoe. “On it.”

_ Off, off, off, _the flicks of her wrists chant.

_ Flow away, _ the cascade of her fingers demands.

Sluggishly, the water complies, sloughing off but leaving the icy chill clinging to their bones.

Katara shakes her parka loose, dislodging the chunks of ice held in the hood. “Alright, so it’s safe to say that neither of us actually knew what we were doing.”

Sokka groans and rubs his arms desperately, shaking his head like a polar-dog. “La, Katara!” he exclaims. “You can _ float _ ice! You can melt it! You can do a lot of things! What am I supposed to do? Throw a _ boomerang _at a wall of water? I thought you had it under control!”

Katara snarls back, a wicked twist of the lip to remind her brother that it’s the female tiger seals that are the most dangerous to cross. “At least you don’t have to have a whole conversation with your boomerang before you throw it!”

That’s when the boy in the iceberg starts floating and glowing.

“HA!” Katara yells, pointing at their inevitable doom. “I TOLD YOU IT WAS A SPIRIT!”

“Priorities, Katara!”

-

Zuko wakes up coughing seawater, which is rather bizarre since he’s forty feet above the deck and, to his knowledge, has not recently drowned.

Salt and brine tangle his senses into knots as he expels the ocean from his lungs and onto the deck, far below. It is cold, near infinitely so, enough to ache against his teeth. He curls over the edge of the hammock, one hand latched desperately to the rigging to keep himself steady as the sea itself rises from his lungs.

_(it is back, it is back, it is in my waters, the traitor to our kind,)_ the ocean says as it rushes out of his throat._ (it is back, child of the sun,)_ La mutters, _(i want revenge upon it)_

Unbeknownst to him, the middle digit burnt into his back glows a heavy blue before fading away.

The water stops rushing out and Zuko hacks and coughs the lingering taste out of his mouth.

_(it is back, it is back)_

_(you must come)_

A hand settles against his back.

(burning, burning, a mother’s touch)

(blazing, blazing, a father’s affection)

(scorching, scorching, a sister’s love)

(danger, danger, danger)

Zuko reacts poorly.

Not bad enough that the owner of the hand is sent plummeting down to the deck, but it’s a near thing.

Bo has never been the smartest crewman when it comes to giving Zuko personal space, after all. Zuko has never been the best with people getting close.

Bo’s gotten very good at grabbing nearby ropes very quickly. It is likely the only thing that saves him from dying a horribly embarrassing death on a disconcertingly frequent basis.

Zuko swings over the hammock and twists his body between the surrounding ropes, carefully controlling his descent down to where Bo clings to the basis of his employment.

“You are very bad at announcing your presence, crewman,” Zuko says.

Bo wriggles his foot free of a messy tangle of rigging and sighs down at the mess he will now have to fix. “That one’s on me, sir. The ‘vomiting water’ thing threw me off my game. It won’t happen again.”

“You said that the last four times, crewman.”

“Yeah, that’s fair. Any reason why you’re throwing up sea water, or is that just a you thing?”

Zuko stretches in his rope cradle, then leans over to spit another stream of salt water over the edge of the ship. “A little bit of both, I think.” He wipes his mouth on the back of his hand and flips over the rope to stand on one, carefully balanced. “Where’s the Lieutenant?”

Bo very carefully does not glare at his commanding officer as he struggles his way out of his tangled prison. “I think he’s inspecting the cargo hold, sir.”

“Good. I’ll have to tell him.”

“Tell him what, sir?”

Zuko takes one step backward off of his rope and plummets down to the open ocean, catching himself at the last second on the lowest section of rigging and sliding to a smooth stop on the railing.

He does not respond to Bo.

(“Well that’s rude,” Bo mutters to himself, extricating his body from the twisted ropes and setting to fix it before the rest of the crew comes up with the rising sun to do their drills. Bo has gotten more used to waking with Zuko than he has waking with the sun. It’s probably a non-bender thing.)

Zuko moves to the hold with a single-minded purpose and the tang of salt coating the back of his throat.

_(awake, awake, the one who betrayed us lives,)_ La snarls. _(the betrayer did nothing while our children suffered, and for that they must suffer in kind)_

Zuko marches into the cargo hold and nods sharply at Lieutenant Jee. The Lieutenant is part of the way through a salute of his own before Zuko turns to the corner and lets out another mouthful of seawater.

Jee sighs. “Well, that certainly doesn’t mean anything good.”

“No,” Zuko confirms, “but it does mean a chance for us to go home.”

Jee falters and puts his clipboard - carefully and meticulously organized, to keep another drought at sea from occurring - on a nearby crate. “Dare I ask why?” Jee says, quiet and solemn.

Zuko closes his eyes, for one second, and then unties the fabric hiding his left eye. It doesn’t feel right to share this news half-blinded.

_(Did you hear? Did you hear?)_

_(Did you know?)_

“The Avatar’s awake. We go to the South Pole.”

Jee let out a woosh of breath - irresponsible, for a firebender - and closes his eyes as he resettles. “With all due respect, my prince, are you sure you want to deliver the Avatar to your father?”

Zuko smiles in the way he tends to do, with the edges pulled just a fraction of an inch too wide to be comfortable for anyone to see.

(A chance)

(A sign)

(A fool’s errand)

“Who said we’d deliver the Avatar to my father?”

(For just a moment, his teeth look sharper, and both of his eyes look slitted. For just a moment, Jee feels something heavy rising with the sun.)

Jee blinks once, surprised, and that is the only opening Zuko needs to slip out, unnoticed. Jee is left alone with a blank room of perfectly intact supplies.

(“Oh,” he says, “this is going to go horribly.”

He gathers up his clipboard and goes to find the helmsman. They have a course adjustment to make.

And Jee has an appointment with his private liquor stores.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all????? Y'all????????????
> 
> I've got forty-nine comments in my inbox thanks to you guys.

Aang wakes up with a pounding headache and two people staring down at him.

They’re both bundled in furs, with thick hoods pulled over their faces and furred balaclavas that stop him from seeing most of their heads, but the one on his left has deep scowl lines, while the one on the right has a smile in their eyes like Gyatso always did whenever he’d win a bet. Given the color of their parkas, he’s pretty sure he’s in one of the Water Tribes.

The fact that he feels like he was just flash-frozen supports that hypothesis.

Aang wiggles his toes and fingers, trying to take stock of all of them and make sure none of them are missing, before groaning and turning to his side to push himself up into a sitting position using his elbows. When his hands rest back on the floor he draws them back with a yelp, as the floor is ice cold. Probably because it is ice.

Yeah, definitely one of the Tribes.

Now, to see which one he’s in.

He is of the South, one of Zūnshǒu’s children, and they are gentle. 

They are the scholars and the researchers and the elders and the masters, those who seek where the wind gives them leave.

They are the spies and detectives, are agents and watchers, are the ears of their Faith, those who find the whispers that the wind carries.

He is of the latter. He is one of Zūnshǒu’s children. He knows how to ask a question while looking for a different answer.

So, with his mind still trying to catch up with his shivering body, he says, “Wanna go penguin sledding with me?”

The scowling one only deepens the scowl lines, while the smile-wrinkles on the other turn furrowed and confused.

“Nice going, Katara,” complains the scowling one, voice muffled by the mask. “You broke the Spirit!”

The confused one - Katara - waves a hand in the scowling one’s direction and a tiny stream of water slaps over the hood of their parka. “Really? Nice going, genius. Why don’t you just give out the family name, while you’re at it,” they snap toward Scowling. “Also, why don’t you just insult the ocean and cut your net into the sea, just to completely scorn all of the Spirits! Did Gran Gran teach you nothing, or did you get it knocked out of your head all the times you messed up with your boomerang?”

Scowling makes an affronted noise and scrambles back from Katara, who is evidently a waterbender. That’s always good information to have.

Unfortunately, since he doesn’t have any solid response from either of his acquaintances, he’s still as lost as he was before he asked. It’s more likely that he’s at the South Pole, given his hazy recollections of the last few hours, but given what he learned-

Oh.

Hm.

He’d almost forgotten he was the Avatar.

Well.

It’s very possible he went to the North Pole, given his… _ recently discovered _ status. It has stronger spiritual energy. It’s a tossup, really, between the two. Given they hadn’t answered his question, he can’t make any geographical decisions, as it’s a well-taught fact that otter-penguins aren’t native to the North.

Instead of any valuable information, he’s now uncomfortably aware of the fact that he just tried the clumsiest possible way of attaining that information.

Gyatso would have just laughed and scraped his thumb over the peach fuzz that persistently tried to grow over his student’s arrow- gifted for Aang’s proficiency in all parts of his Faith. Gyatso would’ve smiled with his eyes crinkled, and asked for him to rephrase.

The Elders would’ve sniffed and glared at the arrow on his head, as if doubting he deserved it.

He knows now why they always did that. He can taste the bitter-berry and biting-air of their disappointment in their mouth now, knowing that he was supposed to be bending better, knowing that he was supposed to be better. Knowing that he’s the Avatar.

He can taste the salt of the sea in the back of his throat, and feel the wind eating away at his cheeks, as a familiar, ravenous monster.

Without thought, he raises his palms to the sky and casts out a prayer gesture to Tíngzhǐ. The devouring breeze stops in its tracks and finds somewhere else to be.

With his head still fuzzy and caught in a spiral of worry, it takes him a very long moment to realize that his bubble has included the two others.

The two others that are staring at him.

Frozen.

Unmoving.

That doesn’t bode well.

For a second, he thinks he botched the prayer. He had needed to learn Tíngzhǐ’s most intense invocation, after all, to gain the arrow that drips over his forehead. Then he realizes that he can breathe just fine. He didn’t bend the breath out of their chests.

So why are they still staring at him?

Katara reaches up with gloved hands and knocks the hood of the parka down, tugging down the mask. Her eyes are wide, and her mouth is slack, until she closes it and furrows her brow.

“What?” Aang says, dread growing in a pit deep within him, a pit deep enough that even Appa couldn’t f-

Appa.

Appa.

Appa.

Where is Appa.

He moves without hesitation, prayer gestures tripping over his fingers in a messy, unpracticed rush _(you disappoint us, Aang. you should know better)_ as he calls for the wind to raise him up to the lip of the icy crater behind him, down to where Appa lays-

Motionless.

Aang surges down, feet skidding against the ice and shedding frost in his wake, down and down, adrenaline chasing him as surely as the two behind him.

Frantically, he presses his whole body against Appa’s snout.

He nearly breaks down when he feels the gust of breath over his robes.

Appa’s alive- he’s alive- that…

That means something right?

That means something to his brain that feels scrambled and wrong and violated and like something is crawling down his veins and digging into his skin-

He didn’t sign up for this- he never did-

Why did it have to be him?

Why did he have to be the Avatar?

He doesn’t register the glow that starts gushing over his skin.

After that, he doesn’t register much at all.

Largely because he’s unconscious, with a boomerang-sized welt on the back of his head.

-

“Oh, Gran Gran is going to _ kill _ you,” Katara says sourly, as Sokka catches his boomerang back from the rebound off of the _ glowing Spirit’s _skull. Her brother is really going all in when it comes to slighting Spirits today. He’s going to curse all of her children, just from blood proximity.

Sokka beaned an Air Spirit. They’re supposed to be extinct- all but Fēng and the three Aspects. Even they haven’t been seen in almost a century. It’s either good fortune or a bad omen that this one arrived at the village.

_ Push and Pull,_ Katara reminds herself.

_ The Give and the Take._

_ All is a gift, and all is suspect. _

“You know what Katara?” Sokka says, as he shoves the boomerang back into his belt and grabs under the Spirit’s arms. “You can zip it.”

Sokka proceeds to huff and struggle his way into dragging one skinny child across the ice, gloves slipping over the Spirit’s clothing- far too thin for anything mortal to survive in these conditions. Katara watches, and casts a glance back toward the mountain of fluff and fur, with one big, black nose sticking out of the pile.

It’s far too cold in the South, and far too dangerous, to have Earth Kingdom koala-sheep roaming around, although their wool would be priceless. Looking at the unconscious mound of fur, a single shearing could last the village for years, although it might not be quite as warm as Earth Kingdom wool. For the Elders it would be invaluable, taking form in blankets, both ritual and practical-

Katara snaps herself out of her musings with a shake of her head. It’s very possibly a Spirit in its own right. The part of her brain that has been training with the women in her village for resource allocation screams at the waste, and as Interim Chieftess in charge of food and ceremony her hands itch to tug the fur through her fingers and determine its quality. The part of her brain that still remains in that tent in the deepest winter, with Gran Gran speaking lowly of the Push and Pull, shoves the impulses back.

“You can also-” Soka breaks off with a grunt and a few huffs, glaring down at the heaviest child known to man, “help me load this dude into our canoe, and get that-” Sokka gestures impatiently towards the Spirit- “whatever the hell that is.”

As if hearing the offense toward it,

_(Nice going, Sokka)_

the Animal Spirit opens eyes as dark as mud and shuffles to its feet- all six of them. Six legs stamp on the ice, making a spine-scraping creak of impending doom. The mouth opens wide - almost too wide - a dark cavernous pit with flat teeth made for crushing, and a massive sound emits from it. The sheer wind from it blows Katara’s hair loopies back against the back of her head.

_ “Oh, La, those are big teeth_,” Sokka screeches, and books it to the canoe, carrying the Monk Spirit with him in a surge of adrenaline.

Katara holds herself back from rolling her eyes, or running, or screaming, and instead meets the bottomless pools of the Animal Spirit’s eyes.

_ Push and Pull. _

_ Give and Take. _

Very slowly, she lowers her back and rises up on her toes in one smooth motion, like the rocking of waves. A Water Tribe bow.

The Spirit watches her for a few long seconds, then releases a loud snort and flattens its long tail against the ice, dipping its head to highlight the brown arrow streaked through its fur.

Good. Sokka hasn’t completely messed up courtesy requirements. That means that this Spirit is merciful, and perhaps even useful. That meant that they might actually survive this.

“You honor me with your presence, Great One,” Katara says, and very carefully doesn’t listen to the water beneath her feet whispering _break crack destroy_. Instead she lowers her stance and informs it **_Freeze_** before rising back to her full height.

The Animal Spirit snorts and noses at the ground, where the cracks have turned white and solid with fresh frost. It looks up and meets Katara’s eyes, then releases a low, crooning sound that echoes over the ice fields.

It recognizes bending.

Then, uncaring of its massive weight, it lumbers forward, dragging its tail in a wide arc.

** _Freeze, cease, smooth, harden_**, Katara asks of the ice, and for now it seems to comply.

The Spirit stops a foot away from Katara, hot breath gusting over her jacket and melting the ice crystals clinging to her gloves.

Then it presses its massive nose against her head and inhales heavily, as if scenting the ice in her blood and the water at her fingertips.

Katara finds herself hoping this isn’t a Hunter Spirit.

She’d hate to know what it would do with the scent of the last Southern Waterbender.

It lets out another sound - deep and guttural, yet satisfied - and then stomps past her, heading toward the canoe, where Sokka stares at it and holds the paddle like it would defend him.

“It’s alright,” Katara calls to her brother as she sizes up the ice chunk that the Spirit is nesting down on, “they won’t hurt us. I think they want to go back to the village.”

Sokka releases a noise like an ice-cat being strangled.

“Oh, get over it,” Katara mutters. She hope into the boat and reaches out with her senses.

_ Water. _

_ You are Water. _

_ Melting. _

_ Flowing. _

_ Breaking. _

_ Chaining. _

_ Freezing. _

_ Holding. _

_ Moving. _

Once she pulls herself upright from the last movement, their canoe is chained to the block of ice that the Spirit rests on, and the ice fields flow past as the water pushes them back to the village.

The Chieftess is coming home, and she brings the dead with her.

-

“Finally.”

The column of light has stopped searing through the sky, but it hardly matters.

There is only one thing of note in the South, nowadays.

Only one place for the Avatar to be hiding.

Only one place to search before he can finally return back to the Caldera.

It has been too long since he was sent to reclaim the honor of his family, the honor of his country, the honor of his Firelord.

He is _ so _close.

“Sir?” The crewman closest to him hazards.

“We head for the light. Inform the helmsman. Get our warriors ready.” He turns and casts a baleful glance towards the one who dared to speak. “Fail me, and the Southern Savages won’t be the only ones to burn.”

He turns back to the horizon, eyes searching for another sign of light.

It’s a damn shame all of their maps for the South are out of date by now. It will take searching the ice to find their next refuge.

That was the greatest challenge of the Waterbender Hunts - finding the village and pushing the leverage before the Waterbenders found you and pushed the water in your stomach to crystallize, and removed their whole village from the ice shelf to boot.

It also gives him more of a thrill to the hunt. 

The ship slowly banks, and the prow faces the tall glaciers in the south.

And Zhao smiles.


	3. Chapter 3

Katara works her way through some of the simpler vocabulary while the currents push the canoe onward. She’s had a long talk with the water beneath them to keep it moving. The closer she gets to the village, the more familiar it is with her, and the more amenable it is to listen to her. 

No body of water is ever the same body of water, of course, so there are some stranger currents she has to introduce herself to. It’s nothing like bending that glacier, or the harsh, changeable flux by the ice fields.

She’s learned to speak by these waves, and they greet her happily for it.

For eight years, she crawled and toddled and lived by them, with their currents fluttering her blood in her veins, with their curiosity dragging her to the icy shore to stare out after them. For four years in those eight, she was taught broken speech second-hand by everyone who could remember anything of the way waterbenders spoke to their element.

She stopped talking to it when she was eight. For three years.

All she could hear was-

_ snap crackle hiss pop _

_ blood burning the snow into steam _

_ mom mom mom mom please wake up please don’t leave me _

_ Tui and La don’t let this happen _

_ please please please- _

For a year of those three, all she could hear was-

_ We have to defend our village, and the best way to do that is far away _

_ We have to protect you, so we have to leave _

_ I love you, Katara, but it is dangerous if we stay behind _

_ Let Sokka guard the village _

_ You’ve done enough _

_ You’ve done enough _

_ (My wife is dead because you live) _

_ (Your brother is motherless for your sake) _

For three years, she listened.

Something changed when she was eleven. The ocean hushed for days at a time, and didn’t talk to her at all. She was almost tempted to use her half-broken, half-remembered speech to plead for it back.

She had already lost her parents. Both to the war. One to Koh, the other to the distant battlefront. She couldn’t bear to lose the ocean too.

It came rumbling back to her five days later, and she almost cried.

She tried to relearn her craft again. She tried to piece out the puzzle of the crashing waves and pushing tide. It was hard, but she worked until she could melt and freeze and surge. Until she could make clumsy knives and relocate whole sections of the ice so their fishing trips could move quicker.

A year later, the Southern Warriors returned home. Not for long. Never for long. Still, it was time given for the children and wives to reunite with their husbands. For them to count up the dead and rejoice for the living.

Time for Katara’s father to hand her a small collection of mist-damp scrolls, with a haunted look in his eyes.

“Learn these,” he’d said gruffly. “La knows the Burned Crown doesn’t care if they hurt children. I am trusting you with the village, Katara.”

She was smeared in war paint and declared Interim Chieftess that very night, with the scrolls stuffed in her parka pocket and the ocean calling for her, and her brother at her side as Interim Chief.

No one cast down a spear to challenge. All of those well enough to do so would leave two nights later, with Tui smiling down upon them. Back to war. Leaving them behind.

The children would rule.

That was what it had come to.

Katara was left behind with a new mantle and new knowledge stuffed into her hands.

So she learned.

The scrolls are tucked in the tent. She doesn’t dare take them outside, just in case she phrases something wrong and endangers their ink and careful sketches. She knows each of the movements by heart by now.

The smooth shift of the ankle to say _ and, _ the fluttering of the fingertips that says, _ yet, _ the curve of the hand that says the most basic word: _ water. _

Pillars of water rise and freeze and melt as she passes by them, shifting from verb to verb with the air of memorized practice. She’s good at practice. In combat, she freezes up. She sees-

_ (snap crackle hiss pop _

_ blood burning the snow into steam) _

-danger at every corner, and her speech stutters. She’s the Chieftess for a reason, though. She is the defense, not the offense. She is the only one that can move the village. The only one that can speak directly to La.

She’s not supposed to see combat, unless the worst really does occur. Until the snow turns black and hisses under scarlet blood.

The northern wind blows warm, today. She can almost taste the phantom of ash with it.

“So, what do you think we’ll have for dinner tonight?” Katara asks. The water around the sides of the boat stretches and swells to follow the arch of her arms.

“Our sea prune supply doesn’t seem to be running out anytime soon. Elder Sikna has a fresh batch of seal jerky.” Sokka fiddles with the fishing spear to his side. “This fishing trip is a bust, though.”

“Oh, this was a fishing trip?” Katara exclaims, with a wide grin. “Why ever didn’t you say so?”

“Katara-” Sokka starts, and then thinks better of wasting his valuable energy talking, instead grabbing the Monk Spirit and dragging him back to the safe side of the boat.

Katara raises her arms- their small net rising, with tendrils of water curled around its webbing- and slams them down in one swift motion.

_ Find _

_ Wrap _

_ Raise _

_ Wave _

_ Crash _

_ Disperse _

A few more cursory flicks of her hands, and the water in the canoe leaps back into the ocean, leaving behind a large tangle of netting and struggling fish. She ghosts a hand over their struggling bodies and breathes out a few quick words of thanks to Agni, for giving them these lives, and La, for carrying them to her. With her touch, their scales frost over, and their suffering cuts short.

“Someday you’ll do that with another tribesman, and they won’t know to get out of your way,” Sokka says sourly.

Katara laughs and pulls the frozen fish to her side of the canoe. Her catches, her responsibility, her job to deal with the smell. “I look forward to the day any of them come home long enough to even go out on a fishing trip with us.”

She returns back to her verb practice, and only realizes her brother’s silence a few minutes later.

She isn’t the only one who misses her father. She isn’t the only child given the South Pole to hold on her shoulders.

Katara snaps her hands out and the ice pillars she was halfway to building dissolve back into water with a harsh word. She shifts out of her waterbending stance and rubs her wrists to work out the tension. She spares a quick glance behind her at the Monk Spirit and its blue tattoos, and decides to take advantage of her brother’s brooding. She doesn’t know if she’s up for the jokes currently.

“You do realize this is an omen, right?” she asks.

Sokka glances back at the Animal Spirit on the ice behind them, then at the Monk Spirit by his side, then to Katara, a few times. He nods slowly. Given the fact that he’s not even putting on the theatre of siblinghood, he evidently understands the impact of what they’ve done.

Sokka is good in combat. He’s good at compartmentalizing. It makes him horrible when it comes to respect in stressful situations, or manners, or just about anything that requires multiple sections of his brain. He has a wolf’s instincts. He knows how to hunt, and retrieve, and trap, and hide and run when the adrenaline kicks in. It’s only after the act that he has to become very much aware of what he’s done, and he can actually reason through things properly.

His brain-to-mouth filter suffers for it.

There’s a reason Katara’s in charge of rituals. There’s a reason Sokka goes out to kill tiger seals when the blizzards get too harsh and the food gets too low.

“The northern wind is warm in the middle of winter,” Katara starts, “and we’ve just unfrozen two extinct Spirits.”

“Conflict is coming,” Sokka dutifully responds. He worries his gloves over the hilt of the fishing spear. “Do you think we’re ready?”

Katara stares off into the distance, toward the arches of ice that mark the way home. The sun waits, ever the sentinel, on the horizon. Agni watching over the both of them.

She does not respond, but the water dripping from the prow of the canoe freezes into long blades with a flex of her fingers.

Neither of them say a word.

-

Kanna feels the way the wind shifts over her wrinkled face, and her lips purse into a frown. The north wind blows ever harsher, but unlike its compatriots, it brings warmth that might, in an earlier time, have been comforting.

Once, a long century ago, a warm northern wind meant profit and prosperity. It meant good hunts and healthy children. It also meant thin ice and more predators walking the frost, but it was a small price to pay. The Push and the Pull. The prosperity and the danger.

Now, the heat of the north brings nothing but a sense of dread into Kanna’s old, weary bones. It brings with it ships, and the children of fire. It brings those that have killed all but the last of the Tui-blessed children of the sea. Those that have killed her daughter-in-love, and stolen away all of her friends that held the ocean in their hands and spoke its words so well.

The thin ice, with no one to keep it stable, and the predators on their ships come with the warm northern wind.

Lì set afire.

Kanna wraps her aching hands in furs and shuffles to stand by the edge of the ice shelf and takes in a deep whiff of the air. The smell of the sea changes, ever so subtly, whenever a waterbender is near. It smells a little more like the copper of blood and less like the salt of the ocean. Katara is the only one of her kind that has survived.

Kanna creaks open her jaw and lets the sound build from deep within her chest. A heavy, growling, throaty call that claws its way into the air and drags out spines into the sky. Wolves speaking into the frost, and asking for a response.

From within the village, come answering howls. From the distance, where the ice fields are, comes another.

The other Elders creak their way free of their tents, with icy eyes and staffs thumping against the ground with every step. The children stumble their way out of the warmth of home and into the arctic freeze, wrapped in fur and carrying their tiny knives in their gloved fists. The women exit with nets and fishing spears, solemn and guarded and ready. 

The canoe rounds the nearest icy arch, with one proud figure standing at the helm, hands moving in gentle circles. Behind the canoe, comes a larger, more massive silhouette. As Kanna watches, it stands up to a truly terrifying height, backlit by the sun, and roars in response.

There is nothing of its kind that’s been seen as long as Kanna has lived in this life. Nothing like the hulking creature that her grandchildren - her Chief and Chieftess - have brought home, has been seen in the South Pole for many decades.

The north wind burns the sky.

“Gather the sick,” Kanna rasps, “and gather your weapons.” She turns back to the assembled crowd. “We prepare for the worst.”

-

Aang gasps awake and immediately spits fur out of his mouth. 

Appa groans behind him in the low rumble of a disrupted nap and sluggishly drags one of his legs out to place Aang back against his chest. His slimy tongue laps over Aang’s bald head, and then he partially rests his massive chin on Aang’s shoulder. The weight, as always, is as uncomfortable as it is comforting.

“Come on, boy,” Aang mumbles into the fresh wave of fur shoved into his face, courtesy of Appa’s cheek, “I have to get up, or Gyat-”

For the second time in a day, Aang remembers.

He remembers-

_ War is coming _

_ We need you Aang _

_ The Avatar will be sent away to the Eastern Air Temple to complete his training _

Gyatso is going to be so mad at him when he gets back. He didn’t mean to get caught in the storm. He hopes Gyatso didn’t get in trouble with the other Elders for letting the Avatar slip through his fingers. It was Aang’s fault, really. For not being better.

For not being a better Avatar. For disgracing the names of Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen with his actions.

Maybe he deserves to be taken away from Gyatso, if this is what he does with his power. If he runs and hides at the slightest sign of danger.

The yielding wind is not selfish. It does not preserve itself. Aang must be the yielding wind.

(There is a reason he was raised in the South, with the meek destiny of Zūnshǒu)

(There is also a reason many demanded he be raised in the North, with Lì’s harshness)

(Whether to have a martyr or a mercenary, indeed)

“Get up,” Aang says again, a little less softly. “We have to go back. I don’t want Gyatso to suffer for me.” He shrugs his shoulders against Appa’s chin and slips out from under it with a small burst of air, courtesy of a very short prayer to Fēng.

The cold air hits him immediately. It’s almost instantaneous regret that he left Appa’s warmth, but Aang knuckles down and wheedles warmth out of the wind to wrap around his shoulders.

Three of the walls around them are ice, with the third being a large animal skin hung to block out the wind, flapping in the breeze. The cave itself is perfectly sized for Appa, and Aang would bet one of Gyatso’s pies that one of the native waterbenders made it in a pinch. Sky bison are hard to find stables for. They don’t venture this far into the cold for long enough to ever require one, so it’s not like they’re commonplace.

Besides, most sky bison like being out and about. Appa’s no exception.

Aang smiles. “Waiting for me to wake up, huh, bud?”

Appa grunts and bats his tail against the ground bashfully.

“Aww, thanks,” Aang coos, scritching his fingers over Appa’s snout and allowing his hands and general temperature shield to generate some warmth against the bison’s thick coat. “Now, let’s go thank our hosts, and then we have to get back home. Everybody’s probably worried about where we are.”

The sunlight is near blinding when he pushes open the makeshift door. Given that it was the eighth moon of the Snake when he left, that’s a good argument for being in the Northern Water Tribes. The sun is very solidly in a summer position, and the South only gets these same kinds of rays around the first few moons onward of the Rat.

Unless, of course, something went horribly wrong, and Aang took a couple month nap, but he can pretty quickly rule that out. That would be ridiculous.

“You’re awake,” a voice to his right says.

Aang jumps- assisted by a panicked oath to about ten feet into the sky.

“Sor- Apologies!” the voice says again, and as Aang lands and his eyes readjust, he recognizes the girl from earlier. Scowling called her Katara.

“Uh, no worries?” Aang hazards.

“As acting Chieftess of my Tribe, I humbly welcome you to our waters, and I apologize for my brother. He is learning his place, still.” The girl stands, and indeed, the paint over her eyebrows and in a harsh spear over her forehead - freshly applied, given the way it shines in the sun - marks her as Chieftess.

Which doesn’t make sense.

Last he heard, neither of the Water Tribes had any major splinter groups, much less any that dared to use the title of Chief or Chieftess. Also, last he heard, the Chief of the North had six sons, and a bevy of other worthy men ready to fight for the honored title. The North had combined the spiritual and physical leadership of the tribe under a singular title and person fifty years ago. Only the South held onto both positions.

Something is very, very wrong.

“We thank you for your appearance,” Katara continues, taking his silence in stride. “We thought your kind went extinct long ago, and we’re grateful to see that we were wrong. Is there news from the Spirit World that you have been sent to share?”

_ Extinct _

_ Extinct _

  
  
  
  


_ Something is wrong _

Aang brushes off the feeling. “Um… Not as far as I’m aware. Sorry.”

He takes in the rest of the scenery- it’s a tiny village, that’s for sure. He’d assume it would be a hunting outpost, except for the fact that there’s only women, children, and the elderly bustling about through the village. One boy in a wolf tail (probably a Southern immigrant, then) leads those not gathering supplies in combat drills, with knives and fishing spears.

He turns to demonstrate something to the back, and meets Aang’s eyes. Wolf-tail has war paint everywhere, done up in a wolf’s grin, but he has the chief’s paint as well, spearing down his forehead in darkness and guarding his eyes in white. He nods at Aang and Katara, and continues his drills.

The sun is bright and unmoving here, but they talk of Chiefs and Chieftesses both, and wear Southern hair and paint. It should be dark, here. It should be stormy. It should be like the temple was, before Aang left it, no more than a couple days ago, enshrined in long nights and pouring skies.

But it is not.

Something is very, very wrong.

“What month is it?” Aang asks.

Katara hesitates, casting her eyes to the side as if to consider something, then nodding to herself. “First moon of the Rat, I think.”

_ Wrong wrong wrong wrong _

_ Extinct extinct extinct _

“What year?” Aang asks again, jaw creaking with every word. The syllables crumble on his tongue like ash.

“99 AG.”

Aang blinks. AG? What does that even stand for?

Evidently, he spoke out loud, because Katara takes another few seconds to look confused before responding, “After the Genocide.”

  
  


_ Extinct _

  
  


“What genocide?”

It’s at that moment that the black snow starts falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sent out the Southern Warriors a year earlier, because the timeline worked better that way.
> 
> I used Chinese Zodiac signs for the months. Snake is early summer, Rat is midwinter, but that's just dates based in the north. Aang left in the storm around his hemispherical winter, but woke up in hemispherical summer.
> 
> Comment! Kudo! Do neither! Do both! Whatever! Know that I love you for reading this! May Thanksgiving be tolerable!
> 
> In case of horrible relatives, just remember that at least you aren't waking up a century after you could've saved your entire people from a genocide with the burden of the world on you to learn water, earth, and firebending in sevenish months. Aang is so screwed.
> 
> Love y'all with all my heart. I will try to update soon-ish, but no promises.


	4. Chapter 4

Kanna drags her staff in exaggerated arcs through the snow. Symbols sprout in elaborate patterns beneath the sharpened end, sinking deep into the icy slush that lies in the bowl carved into the packed snow at the center of the Community Hut.

Kanna’s no waterbender, but she is the Eldest of the South, and the seas recognize her wrinkles as creeks and the shuffle of her steps as snowmelt. She has listened to the water for long enough to speak its tongue.

She doesn’t speak well enough to bend. Waterbenders communicate with water as one of higher status than it, so it is compelled, on some level, to listen. Benders have the favor of Tui, and she is master and wife over La. Benders are royalty speaking to their millions of subjects, rebellious and loyal alike.

(Bad things happen, however, to those that disrespect La. Tui is protective, and changeable. Her favor can be removed, and it’s a nasty thing to be dragged to the depths, beyond where even her rays shine.)

Kanna is an old friend to the ice, but she is still lesser than it. There are no commands she can give that it will obey, but it will share stories with her, if she asks it nicely.

She speaks with her creaking bones and the sway of her arms, the slow twist of her head and the painful motions of her aching fingers.

_ What is coming? _ She repeats in a chant. It is one of the few things she can still say with her body.

The slush dances and trembles for a brief second. It can’t seem to decide. It needs payment, and clarification.

It is good that Kanna has both.

With a final slam of her staff at the apex of the carved bowl of snow slush, she takes the tightly packed ball of black snow from Sokka’s gloved hands. 

(For once, the boy is quiet in the middle of the ritual. Good for him. The wolf in him likes warpaint and the promise of blood.)

Kanna drops the dark snow into the center of the slush and stamps her foot over it, crumbling the ice and ash into the mixture and repeating her question with a quick, harsh motion that pulls at her joints.

The water rises, and smashes into the stomped ice, swirling and filtering the ash away, spitting it in a wet splatter of dark material at Kanna’s boots. It forms in two flat shapes with triangles over them and a smattering of other characters. One of the shapes has the symbol for _ damned _ over its triangle. 

The other immediately bursts into flames.

It keeps burning as Kanna studies the other symbols spilling over the rest of the snow.

“Two boats,” she announces, finally. “Spirits hate one of them. Our village will be safe, but only if the boats are directed elsewhere, and the two extinct harbingers leave.”

With one smooth move, she yanks her staff out of the edge of the pit and stomps her foot down over the slush, splattering it in a smooth wave out from the indented bowl. The flames gutter under the rush of water and eventually succumb. The ash washes away and the water smooths back over now that its piece is done and said, as it has done for as long as Kanna has lived.

Sokka clears his throat. “Uh. Gran-Gran? What does the fire mean?”

Kanna shrugs. “No idea. Hasn’t happened before.” She tosses her head from side to side and gives a careless frown. “Maybe good, maybe bad. Push and Pull.” As she shuffles past Sokka to leave the tent she pats him on the head with her glove still speckled with ash and snow.

“Alright,” Sokka concedes, picking his fishing spear up from the side of the tent and joining her as they exit into the village proper, “I guess I’ll take that as an answer. What do I have to do?”

Kanna laughs: a hoarse sound like the polar hyenas of their sister tribe. “Find your sister and the two you brought to our tribe. You all must go to the Dead Man’s Ship.” She pokes Sokka in the chest with the thick, blunt end of her staff. “You must fight, Wolf-Child, or we may perish.”

Sokka blinks hard and furrows his brow, cracking the drying paint. “Gran-Gran, how will Dead Man’s Ship help anyone? It’s trapped to Koh’s Lair and back!”

Kanna grunts approvingly. “Yes. And the predator always comes when it thinks it smells blood.” She smiles with the kind of malice that drowns lesser men, and the hatred of the roiling sea. “Hunters always check their traps. They rarely expect their prey to have set one off on purpose.”

-

Katara walks side by side with her brother. They wear matching paint and the same quiet fear. Katara’s already exhausted, and the day is far from over.

Foreign icebergs and water currents taxed her enough, adding to all of her practice and transport of both Spirits. It takes a great deal of chi to convince foreign waters to to even begin the conversation, much less the chi spent for the things they want in return. The most difficult thing, however, was coaxing the thick mist out of the air, to obscure the village from sight.

It’s hard to bend water in the air, even with the burgeoning snowstorm lurking in the icy skies. The verbs aren’t as familiar to Katara, so her verses to persuade the moisture in the air were distinctly lacking in entertainment value for the water, and it required much more of her chi in compensation for its time. Difficulty doesn’t matter in the face of necessity, though. Katara still wishes she could just collapse back home, but she must fulfill her duties.

She protects the village. Right now, protecting the village doesn’t mean defending it, it means misdirection and brutal blows.

Two ships. Potentially hundreds of combatants.

_ (snap crackle hiss pop _

_ blood burning the snow into steam) _

The sea will gladly help her destroy one of the ships, according to Sokka. The other is a debatable case.

She doesn’t know what to do with the Spirit. The Monk, that is. The Animal seems to know much of the world already, in the depths of its dark, mourning pits of eyes. The Monk seems more lost than anything, with questions that Katara doesn’t quite know how to answer. Like the one he asked her just before the sky started crying shadows.

She knew better, of course, than to speak of the genocide to the Spirit of a massacred people while her whole vilage was nearby. Spirits often don’t have the same sense of causation as humans do, and have a nasty tendency to obliterate the messenger, with the addition of all of the messenger’s bloodline and the current surroundings. The Chieftess must protect the village.

The black snow had let her obfuscate and turn the subject away, had let her explain the necessity of her task to organize and bend the mist into dizzying thickness. The time had rushed past quickly, and then the two leaders and both Spirits were off to the Dead Man’s Ship, with barely a second to explain anything.

Katara moved Dead Man’s Ship a few months after her father came back with his teaching scrolls. It was her practical exam, of a sorts, for being able to move the village if it came down to it.

The ice had fought her every step of the way, with the ghost of Fire Nation footprints gusting deep in its layers. The waterbenders who decimated the ship were very clear on their intentions when they asked the ice to fold and form. So intent, in fact, that she could still feel the chi that they had to sacrifice in return for the water accomplishing their favor.

She bent it as far around their ice shelf as she could before she collapsed.

Regardless, it now serves as a convenient landmark, far away from their tiny village and piercing up toward the sky distractingly enough to keep just about anyone from noticing the village in the mist.

It was her greatest achievement, and now it’s where she very well may die.

Her gloves are warm, but her hands tremble.

“Are you sure you know where everything is?” Sokka mutters over to her, with a teasing grin crinkling the corners of his eyes.

Katara rolls her eyes theatrically. “I had to catalog every inch of that ship before Gran-Gran let me move it. I know where I put it, and I know where the flares are.”

“Just checking,” Sokka says, and his grin fades slowly. “Are you feeling okay?”

“We might die, Sokka,” Katara whispers. “I know we’re protecting the village but- when Gran-Gran was our age, she was playing in the ice fields and braiding hair and having _ snowball fights. _ She wasn’t walking to her certain doom.”

Sokka sighs. “It’s only certain if we think it’s certain. We have the Spirits on our side.” He glances over to the other two walking with them. “At our side, too. We have a chance. We just have to misdirect them, and you just have to freeze them into an iceberg.”

“I will pass out if I have to do that.”

“Well, tough luck, because my boomerang does not magically generate ice.”

“What _ is _that?” the Monk Spirit says behind them, startling them both in a jolt. Sokka follows the line of his finger to the top of the ship, where the bloody flag of the Fire Nation flaps silently in the thick mist, emerging from the fog in front of them like an accusing finger.

“Dead Man’s Ship,” Katara announces grimly. “The flares are a few rooms in from the entrance closest to the sea. We just have to make this seem enough like an accident to call the Raiders here. From there, we have to lead them further from the village.”

Sokka sighs and removes his boomerang from his belt. “It would be better to have to element of surprise, but we’ll just have to work with what we have.”

The Monk Spirit laughs suddenly. It rings over the ice fields like bells, all high and bright. “We have surprise! Appa can fly!”

Katara and Sokka exchange glances and a wordless conversation with just their eyebrows.

“And… Appa would let us ride on him?” Sokka finally says. Katara makes a face at him- a scrunched look of displeasure that evaporates as quickly as snow thrown on coals.

The Monk Spirit nods.

“Wish that came up earlier,” Sokka mutters, just barely loud enough for Katara - and Appa, the Animal Spirit, given the way he grunts - to hear. “Alright, updated plan.”

-

Ensign Liu Bo stands at the prow of the Recognition. She very carefully does not glare at the back of her commanding officer. Of course, it would be hard for anyone to say anything about what she is doing, what with the heft of the helmet that presses against her skull. And the general distaste everyone has for Captain Zhao.

None of the armor on board fits her. It’s all cast-offs and incorrectly made pieces. They are the rejects of the Firelord. Why should they deserve actual protection? It’s a miracle they’re all alive, anyway. 

Liu Bo herself could’ve easily died for her insubordination- a large portion of the crew could’ve.

Liu Bo’s on this mission from hell, officially, because she was derelict in her duties and allowed an earthbender out of his cell, leading to him knocking her out and bludgeoning her commanding officer to death.

The truth is slightly more complicated. The earthbender had a broken leg. He could barely walk. Liu Bo’s head wound more closely matched someone slamming their own skull against a wall than an outside attack. Her commanding officer had been stealing little girls from their villages and taking them to his quarters. In addition to the chunk of rock found imbedded in his skull, there were sections of burnt floorboard beneath his desk. Bo’s gauntlets were splashed with a suspicious amount of red and granite dust when she was found on the ground outside of the empty cell, groaning.

The earthbender was intercepted outside of the compound and burnt to death, preventing any testimony than Liu Bo’s from coming to light.

(A pity, really. Liu Bo had hoped he might’ve at least made it to the forest. Then he might’ve been truly free.)

So, her cohort had quietly shuffled all of the evidence contradicting her testimony under the rug and began the solemn process of having her discharged.

At around the same time, Lieutenant Zhao burned an Earth Kingdom boy’s face clean off- an action that, directly or indirectly, contributed to the sudden appearance of a massive ravine that swallowed every one of his comrades whole. Only Zhao made it out unscathed. No earthbenders were reported on the scene.

The duality of the Spirit’s distaste toward his compatriots and favor toward him aggravated the Firelord. Zhao was summarily sent on a dead-end mission to find the Avatar, with the dead-end, freshly disgraced crew to match.

Ensign Liu Bo is lucky enough to not have had to learn an entirely new position on the ship. She is a guardswoman, through and through, and a guardswoman she shall remain. Even if the armor is remarkably bad and surprisingly rusty.

Anyone who would like to test her credentials is more than willing to try to add another scar onto her varied collection. She has wounds that split jagged lines through her gray-streaked hair and cut over her lip. She has a long, rough patch of skin down the whole left side of her back. She has the dots of pale scar tissue on her arms from rains of gravel that mark her skin like constellations.

She was part of the clean-up crew after Ba Sing Se failed. She’s seen enough scars and death and rushing earth for a lifetime. The rolling sea is almost perfect for her.

Her whole position would be a gift, actually, if not for the fact that Lieutenant Zhao is an _ asshole _.

It’s a given, what with the crime that landed him here, but the Lieutenant seems to think he’s Agni himself, and that his soldiers can eat gruel and starve while he eats their good food and wastes the budget on casks of wine, instead of new armor.

Liu Bo has a headache, and it doesn’t have anything to do with how the helmet keeps bruising her temples in its wild swaying. It’s more to do with how uptight her superior officer is.

It’s a shame that Zhao is just the garden variety blend of horrible that tends to get Fire Nation men promoted. All Liu Bo needs is one more spectacular moral flop from her commanding officer, and maybe he’ll be a little too drunk, and tip overboard. It would be a true shame if he did.

Liu Bo already has the section of rail picked out.

It’s not like anyone would argue with her side of the story. Some of them may even grease the deck, and apologize that their industrious work led to the death of their Captain.

Oh, it would be tragedy, of course. It always is. It’s an unfortunate accident and an at-sea promotion and everyone silently agrees that, of course, none of this was a mutiny, it was just a lovely series of coincidences and a few missed letters sent to command.

Half of the people on this ship have papers ready- mostly filled out incident reports of a variety, forged Earth Kingdom citizenship, some death certificates. It’s fantastically easy to commit a crime when you’ve been legally dead for six months in the backlog of paperwork. In a few registries, Liu Bo is recorded as deceased. It’s just part of the flavor of being a Disgraced Sailor.

Part of the flavor, just like how, sometimes, in dark nights or heavy mists, she can feel a second sun rise. 

Just like right now, in the heavy fog that rolled in a dozen minutes ago.

Liu Bo tilts her head toward the second sun, soaking up the outside energy into her core. She’s never been one to deny a courtesy of the Spirits. That doesn’t mean that her spine doesn’t shiver every time that this ghost of Agni creeps up over her shoulder. Usually it’s gone in a flash, just a crossed path, a missed connection that Liu Bo doesn’t regret losing.

It doesn’t leave, now.

If anything, it gets closer.

Closer, nearly to where even the non-benders might start feeling something.

Her spine crackles with uneasy chi and inner flame. The second sun rising as the hunt for a supposed Avatar begins?

This is starting to get steadily more real. Less a man chasing after children’s tales and dead men.

More a Spirit Tale.

The flare lighting up the sky distracts her from the slow-creeping dread. Bright light streaking into the far sky.

She barely contains her groan of frustration, although it’s not like anyone would be able to hear it over Zhao’s cackling laughter.

“Full speed ahead, Helmsman!” Zhao crows, and turns to face one of the new recruits, who can barely stand being on the sea yet, with madness sparking deep in his eyes. “Ready a squadron, and find me a spyglass! Today, we find the Avatar!”

Liu Bo waits perfectly still, in the hopes that Zhao won’t spot her, and peers through the heavy mist at where the flare erupted from.

Zhao mutters half-intelligible words as he paces back and forth on the deck, occasionally glancing up to look through the mist. A few minutes pass before the rookie scrambles back on deck with a spyglass in hand, frantic to present it to the Captain. The squadron follows behind him at a sluggish pace.

Liu Bo catches the rookie by the shoulder before he can leave and carefully drags him to the side, so the both of them face sideways to the prow, and more importantly, Zhao. “Don’t bother trying to ingratiate yourself,” she mutters, gruffly, “Zhao thinks praise is his due, but he’s too self-centered to realize when no one gives him any. Licking the coals won’t do a damn thing for you on this-”

She narrows her eyes, past the ship rail, where a thick, dark shadow floats in the middle of the sky.

And it gets closer.

Liu Bo takes a few steps back, then a few more, and keeps her eyes on the horizon, her hand still gripping the rookie’s shoulder.

Closer.

And-

“Duck!” she orders, and drops to the ground, covering the rookie with her own body as the shadow crashes through the mist and onto the deck with a thundering noise, and a deafening, animalistic roar.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, turns out I felt oddly productive the past few days, so enjoy the new chapter. I hope to have another up around Christmas time, but if I don't post it by then, expect to see me in the new year. It's going to be hectic for a little while, so writing time will be thin.
> 
> Y'all are being so nice to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your support! Your comments give me serotonin, so thank you especially to everybody who leaves one of those bad boys.


	5. Chapter 5

They have been traveling through the thick mist for over ten minutes before a tinge of something horribly _ off _hits Zuko.

It’s at that moment that the light of a distant Fire Nation flare lights up the heavy fog.

He swallows down the feeling and shifts his feet where he waits in the center of the deck. All of the crew are on deck now, and there is nothing anyone could say to sway them to go down below where it’s marginally safer. The chill of winter cuts into plate armor like a knife, but the benders of the crew haven’t been at sea without learning at least basic warming techniques. The non-benders pair with a firebender and wait in their bubble of warmth.

Rumor spreads quickly on this ship, and Lieutenant Jee, bless his heart, saw no reason to hide the reasoning for course changes from his Helmsman, who proceeded to tell Cook, who told the whole mess hall, and then everyone told everyone, and in the space of a half-hour, everyone knew that they’re headed for the Avatar.

(Jee’s openness is one of the many things Zuko can appreciate about him)

<strike> _ ( _ _ The 41st Division dies. _ </strike>

<strike> _ For strategic reasons, of course _ _ ) _ </strike>

That, of course, means that half of the crew is on deck just to see how the fight between the Avatar and their local “Spirit Prince” goes down. A third are there because they want to be able to have a quick means of egress in case the worst does happen. The remaining fraction are mostly just there because they’re worried for Zuko.

The crew somehow stays silent, even as the minutes stretch out like dripping lava and the prickling unease spreads down Zuko’s spine, until it is an unbearable tension that he has to cut.

He raises one hand and carves a few flaming characters into the air with a twist of his wrist. Almost immediately, the two crewmen that have the work of bending the warm breeze into the sails cease. 

(A handy technique, really. One lost to time. It was one of the gifts Fēng afforded him at his second funeral for her children, and a gift he gladly shared among his crew.)

There is one second where the unease halts, and his spine stops feeling like it’s being slowly taken from his skin.

One second, in which he brings his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture that the rest of the crew copies without a creak of armor.

Then-

_ (wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong why is she helping the forsaken one? why is the favored child helping the traitor?) _La screams.

Zuko drops to one knee and presses the other to the deck as the sea water burbles up from his throat. Immediately, the three pairs of soldiers closest to him surround him in a ring, weapons and burning hands held to guard. As a credit to the rest of the crew, none of them scream, or gasp any louder than the thick mist will not buffer against.

_ (the wolf and the favored, fools, fools, fools,) _ La mutters, _ (stop them from their mistakes. stop them and save them. they know not what they do.) _

_ (it is in my waters) _

_ (i want revenge upon it) _

Zuko coughs up another lungful of the ocean, and raises his hand to halt everyone in their tracks. “Sto-stop,” he wheezes, and then proceeds to expel a small salt rock, which seems to be La’s final gift. “Cut the flames,” he says. “Drag back the heat, keep us hidden in the mist. Huddle together.” He tips his head back and stares out into the white void extending from their ship. “The Avatar hunts in the air.”

The lanterns attached to the railings snuff out instantaneously. The globes of flame disappear. In a wave, the firebenders exhale and cut every visible flame, and then inhale to drag the heat closer and closer, keeping it from burning the mist away until it’s right above them.

The effect is eerie. Sunlight barely cutting through to the ship, with a shallow bubble of clean air before the twisting tendrils of white dominate the entire sky. Their main source of light is Zuko, whose scales are pushing up from his skin and glowing faintly with a bloody rainbow.

Then, what couldn’t be any more than half a kilometer away, shouts erupt in hellish chorus.

Fire Nation accents. Fire Nation curses. Fire Nation screams.

Zuko’s scales flare bright, then sink back below his flesh as a dangerous, absolute, righteous certainty takes hold of his bones.

The dim suffocation of the mist sinks over the boat quickly, but not quickly enough to hide the grim smile that spreads over Zuko’s face, nor the hand he raises, in signal to wait.

Nor the way he leaps overboard, without a splash.

-

Liu Bo ducks under a chilling, thick knife of air that streaks through the breeze and dives behind her cover of some barrels and hefty sacks to gather herself.

Current combatants: one airbender, seemingly at his peak, one waterbender with war paint, struggling to speak to her element, one undecided, likely nonbender with war paint, and one massive creature with fur slick in ice that refuses to be burned.

Current supplies: Lieutenant Useless, the rookie, nine firebenders doing their level best to not get blown over the edge of the ship, backup from down below that’s taking its sweet time getting here, a variety of nonbenders and firebenders taking cover and taking potshots when they can, and whatever in Koh’s Lair keeps their cover so stable.

“Can you bend?” Liu Bo whispers to Rookie.

Rookie looks down, ashamed. “Not fire.”

Liu Bo nods. “Colony boy, huh?” Carefully, she feels against the cover, hoping against all hope that she can find what she prays her absolutely useless Lieutenant remembered to bring. She reaches into the bag, and smiles when her fingers come out coated in black dust.

One of the firebenders - Zhi, she can tell by the non-regulation helmet he’s had for the last decade and refused to change out of, he’s here because he refused to burn down an Earth Peasant’s hovel - goes over the edge and into the icy water below. The airbender laughs, and the other two enemies join in slight chuckles at their quick turn in fortune. 

Liu Bo stamps down on the rage that rises up in her and sends a silent prayer out to whatever Spirits are currently bothering to listen to protect Zhi’s soul in these lethal seas and let his spirit pass on to a place on honor. She adds on the grim addendums of the others that were on deck when the beast landed and blew them over the edge as well. Southern Waters are not kind, and their armor, however badly made, is still metal. At least a half dozen men are dying in the icy ocean.

The rest of Zhi’s squadron fill in the gap without hesitation. If their blasts of flame are brighter than before, and their smoke is acrid in rage, everyone is too busy screaming for backup, bending in turn, or hiding to comment.

Lieutenant Useless pokes his head out from his cover, and almost gets his ponytail burnt off by a stray bolt of flame. He throws out a few balls of fire, most of them accurate, and nearly clips the wildly flexible and bouncy figure of the airbender. The waterbender responds by using her shaky whips to absolutely drench Useless, before focusing on more pressing issues. Useless dries off in a snap, but the fury in his eyes is unmistakable.

Lieutenant Useless may live up to his name when it comes to commanding a ship, but he’s no slouch in battle. He has good control over his firebending, although none of the finesse that those properly trained have.

Firebenders do not talk to their element, not like the conversations of waterbenders or grim orders of earthbenders. Firebenders control themselves, put their chi into heat and its lack and reign a collar over the piece of themselves they use to kill. They are buzzing energy, and they must meet with the same energy and leash it to their will.

Liu Bo has been firebending since she could walk. When she makes her fire, it is like extra limbs sprouting from her body, pure chi extending through the air and igniting it into hers. She controls them as easily as a wave of her arm, although her joints have taken to protesting that. 

She’s seen a lot of men like Zhao before: the only times they call on their flames are in rage and combat. Their fire is not a limb- it is a weapon. She would say that their disregard of their own flame and the inviolable sanctity of Lord Agni’s gifts would make him angry, but he’s already proven that.

The throne, as she heard a month ago in port, hasn’t reacted to a single spark still.

But the throne doesn’t mean dragon shit if three children and one massive animal kill them all.

“Coal counts for you, correct?” Liu Bo whispers as she forms a spear of fire with low, aggressive sweeps of her elbows and the smooth inhale and exhale of her breath. She extends it out into a solid wall by the nonbender, who’s gotten a little too close to one of the occupied piles of barrels.

It’s a good thing all of the crew is lazy and haven’t bothered taking all of the supplies that they gained a few days ago below deck, otherwise they’d all be stuck in the open.

Rookie closes his eyes and shifts in his crouch. His boots tap solidly against the deck. The bag jostles slightly.

“Good.” She forms another wall of fire and sends it blazing toward the waterbender as her first wall gutters out. The waterbender leaps out of its way and redoubles her efforts to bend. “If I start running, you follow me, and you float those bags behind us.” She scans the scattered barrels and sacks for any allies.

Liu Bo makes eye contact with another group of hiders and twists her fingers together in the military sign for _ firebender. _ She raises an eyebrow in question.

Two of the four nod, one more makes the sign for _ nonbender _ and the last makes the sign for _ colony. _

Well, well, what a coincidence, the ship for traitors has a lot of… _ alternative _benders.

(Commanding officers are always quicker to find reasons to get rid of them. The lingering memory of death brought by crushing rocks typically does that.)

Liu Bo raises her hands to ask her next question-

The beast raises its tail up in one deadly motion that blots out the lamps on the starboard rail.

She throws herself back over Rookie as it descends.

The blast of wind from the impact of the beast’s tail nearly tosses all of the people not behind cover over the edge. In the aftershock, those under the cover leap up and launch a quick assault. Smoke billows as firebenders generate temporary smokescreens, allowing them to find cover again.

Liu Bo grabs Rookie by the back of his shirt, hauls him up, and makes her decision.

She vaults over the barrels and sacks and points to their allies with a jerk of her head, which Rookie interprets flawlessly. While Rookie orders his bags of coal to their new destination, Liu Bo swirls flame around her feet as she drops into a spin. She lashes out with the reaching fire and lowers to the ground as far as she dares go, pressing under a wave of wind.

She launches back up to stand with one more rush of flame, and sinks into a combat stance without hesitation. 

Hopefully Rookie got her plan. If not, then Liu Bo is about to meet her watery death, just like everyone else on this godforsaken vessel.

For a moment, the combatants look startled, almost worried. The waterbender’s tremulous whips fall to the deck with a splash and the non-bender almost misses the return throw on his boomerang. The airbender takes a step back-

Liu Bo slams her palms together and spreads them out in a bar before punching forward, the sizzling flame raging out from her hands in ferocious ghosts of her fists, aching to consume.

-

Aang barely intercepts all of the fire falling in a relentless downpour from the woman across from him. His body knows the movements that his mind is now uneased by-

When he knocked those soldiers over the edge, they were barely better than the pies he’d launch over the edge of the temple, in prayer to the trickster in Fēng. They were like leaves sent spiraling over chasms in the uncaring embrace of autumn, or snow falling from an unbothered sky.

Those soldiers were not human. They had masks, they had helmets, and armor, and gloves, and nary a glimpse of skin anywhere on them. They were animals- no, less than animals, they were playthings. They were pieces taken on a Pai Sho board. The rebound off of an airball goal. Leaves and snow and pies.

Not human. Not feeling.

Not capable of death.

Pai Sho pieces don’t die. They don’t drown or freeze. They don’t suffer. They are captured. There is just victory in their demise, pure and plain and simple.

He sent soldiers over the side. He sent _ people _ over the side.

People that were Pai Sho pieces are over the side of the ship, and they will freeze.

But the woman standing before them is human, and she has a snarl painted on her face as she covers the retreat of her fellows _ away, _ just like all of the others desperately falling back. She has fire wreathing her hands, which do not make conversation or pray. There is nothing but power and desperation and quiet sacrifice behind each of her motions.

Her hair is gray, as well. Streaked with the same color as Gyatso. Beyond that, however, rough patches of scar tissue litter her scalp, and eat away at her lip. She has survived, but her mortality marrs her in a way that shows she did not survive it easily.

She is human.

There is death on her hands, wreathed in orange and yellow and unwavering heat.

There is death on his hands, wreathed in orange and yellow and splashes against the sea.

Aang takes another step back.

And the woman-

The woman ducks.

-

Liu Bo hits the ground the second the glow of fresh flame hits her senses. 

They’re good throws, she’ll grant Rookie and his new friend that much, but they’re not quite good enough to not miss her. Then again, she is standing right in front of their targets.

Anyway, Liu Bo hits the ground, and immediately afterward, burning coal streaks overhead and hits the distracted airbender in the arm, and the nonbender on the hand wielding his boomerang.

Never one to let an opportunity pass her by, Liu Bo leaps back up into a crouch, whips flame out in a roiling wave, and shifts her foot stance, dropping into a roll under the next barrage.

Liu Bo has only ever used this tactic once before, in defense of a Colony town she’s long since forgotten the name of. Earthbenders can bend coal into submission, and firebenders can give it power and direction. Both together are a combination not many can beat, when both the stubborn will of an earthbender and a firebender stand behind every piece of ammunition.

The airbender seems to be trying his level best to bat away the pieces headed for him, but the waterbender looks downright _ frantic _ as her water forms a shell around her and she crouches, covering her head with her arms. The nonbender, after being disarmed by the impact, isn’t a major target.

The main target is the beast, of course. They would all be fools not to take out, or at the least injure, what is both their main source of casualties and their opponents’ means of egress. Damn near a whole sack of coal is emptied against the monster, while Liu Bo keeps its keepers occupied.

Its fur may be resistant due to its coating of ice, but ice shatters easily, and the coal scores scorch marks on nearly every hit. Slowly, its massive, impenetrable armor is chipped away, and soon Liu Bo can bring the offensive even closer.

The nonbender makes a rush for her. Foolish child. She extends her chi into a wall and sets it alight in the air, pushing toward the wolf-painted warrior that turns his assault into a retreat just as easily.

His boomerang goes straight through the wall, however, and Liu Bo is forced to duck again. She isn’t quite fast enough to avoid all of it, but it only nicks the patch of scar tissue on the side of her head that’s too nerve-dead to actually register anything more than a vague, rebounding pressure.

Still, she snarls. She doesn’t take kindly to people touching her scars. She doesn’t take kindly to failing in her duties as a soldier.

Boomerangs don’t take kindly to her either, as on the return it sweeps just low enough to clip her shoulder before returning to the warrior flawlessly.

Before she can do more than gather her chi into a spear, the next volley erupts across the deck.

She watches it pass.

She watches it cut, unbothered, through the very edge of the airbender’s shields.

She watches it strike, perfectly in tune, against one of the beast’s many shoulders, then its nose, and its tail, and only barely miss one of its eyes.

She watches the beast howl in pain as, finally, the fire and coal reach down further than fur and hit skin.

She watches the wind whip out in a punishing wave, bursting their smokescreens and revealing her allies.

And then she runs-

Runs back to where her allies stand, stupefied-

Shouts, “Duck!” for the second time that day,

Covers them as best as she can with her own body,

And closes her eyes and prays to a god that’s abandoned her people.

She prays all of the spirits on this sea-

As the airbender glows and rises into the sky,

And the wave of air sends her tumbling over the rail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyyyyyyyyy
> 
> Guess I showed up a bit earlier than I thought I might. There might even be another chapter around Christmas, but only maybe. I was uncommonly motivated and also incredibly tired, so I got more writing done, but it's even more incomprehensible. Enjoy!
> 
> Also, I'm loving y'all's comments, so keep em up, if you don't mind. Stressful times come by the holidays, and your local author appreciate every scrap of validation they can receive.
> 
> EDIT: Rejoice! For here is [art by Yeetingmeselfintosun](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126092) of Zuko on the boat.


	6. Chapter 6

Zuko ferries another unconscious and freezing form of a firebender back to the dinghy hanging over the edge of his ship. The ropes tying it to the side of the main ship and keeping it from falling into the water are sturdy, yes, but were only kept from fully extending down to the sea at any given moment by a few fastenings that were easy to burn away while he plummeted.

The dinghy is, perhaps, not meant for this many passengers. It certainly isn’t meant to include the other two soldiers still blindly struggling to survive in the waves that Zuko has yet to gather.

Zuko tosses up a quick flare of fire in the characters for _ lift, medical care _. He keeps an eye on the boat as the crew begins to drag it up, to deposit its madly shivering, near-comatose cargo where the firebenders can begin to help recover them.

By all rights, Zuko himself should be frozen through as much as everyone else, but he isn’t numb, or even feeling particularly cold. If he thinks about it, he starts to get a little bit chilly, but that’s easily distracted by the blaring blasts of flame from the ship and his need to hurry in order to save the soldiers from their certain doom.

He steadies himself against the side of his own vessel and turns to dive back under the icy ocean-

He freezes.

The five fingers on his back light up sometimes, with surges of heat. He’s familiar with the feeling, although he often doesn’t feel it unless it’s winter, and his skin is cold enough to taste the difference in temperature.

The thumb lights up seemingly spontaneously, and always with the burn of fresh sunlight. When Agni ghosts his hands against the strings of Zuko’s fate, they shine as bright gold as sunrise.

The pointer finger burns with the sudden bite of a windchill and a heady rush of tingling, sparking steam. Fēng and her aspects accuse the world through him, and guide his way over the sea with their tradewinds, glowing with the orange, red, brown, and pale gray of frosted autumn leaves.

The middle finger sinks like a heavy, warm, bath, or a sudden plunge into a hot spring. Tui is always gentler than La, in that aspect, but neither of them hold kindness high. Tui echoes in pale purple, while La erupts in dark, bitter blue.

Rarely does his ring finger ever light, but when it does it is the burning bite of baked rocks. It glows like grass in sunlight, the darkness of moist dirt, and the deep gray of a rockslide. Jamīna and her sisters hardly ever have cause to speak to Zuko, but when they do, it is with the harsh command that they rule the ground with.

The smallest finger has never lit up.

Except for now.

Now, it glows, bright enough to reflect against the ocean, bright enough to slice through the mist like a beacon.

It glows a white so impossibly bright that it seems like it could eclipse all of the stars.

It burns like-

Like an oncoming apocalypse. Like a twisting dread and a rushing oblivion, like impossible power in unworthy hands. Like anger and hatred and certainty and bitter righteousness. Like a careless hand brushing against a hot kettle, like a thoughtless plunge into the heart of a volcano.

It burns and aches and fills his mouth with the taste of copper as he spits blood into the ocean.

It burns and aches, but it does not feel natural. It does not feel like something that the world allows to live within it.

It does not feel like it belongs.

It does not feel like it should exist.

It feels like it should’ve been purged long ago.

_ (i want revenge upon it) _

It feels like something stolen and lost and taken and mangled.

Like salvation perverted into surrender.

_ (One of Uncle’s endless proverbs: The one man who is sent to defend the gates of the city will just as easily open them to keep his own life) _

The anger he had tamed so well on the ship comes rushing back, rushing with the ocean water as La wordlessly screams in his mind, and as Agni blazes on high at the suffering of his children.

Rushing, like the Pull that Tui embodies as she responds to the anger of her husband and brother.

Rushing, and pushing, and grabbing, and holding, and taking.

The distant form of the other ship becomes a dark, foreboding silhouette as pure _ light _ erupts from its deck. As the world shudders out of a hundred year slumber and _ screams. _

As the mist blazes white, and the Avatar awakes, Zuko slips beneath the waves without a sound.

La pushes him on, as Tui pulls him forward. Agni’s dread fills his lungs with heavy flame.

Fēng is silent, but there is a certain edge of grief in it.

Zuko is silent and-

And what is Zuko, but was not his before his scar burned, pushes to the forefront, past the burn of water in his throat as La howls for revenge, past Fēng’s condemning, mournful silence, and past Agni, to the sister of the sun.

Beneath the water, Zuko removes the sash from over his eye and slings it around his wrist, and opens his eyes fully against the seawater.

There are white streaks of bubbles following the impacts of all of the soldiers tossed into the ocean like nothing better than toys. They struggle against the weight of their armor, fighting their way to the surface. 

There are almost a dozen in the water now, all desperate-

_ “Lord Agni, Lady Tui, Master La, and any Spirit who listens,” _ a voice echoes eerily in Zuko’s head, _ “save us poor traitors to our crown. Save the ones who never deserved to be here. Condemn me, if you must, but I beg of you, save those who deserve better than a death by the ice. In the name of the Ten Primordials, I beg for the lives of my fellows.” _

There are a dozen here, and Zuko knows in the same way he knows when men lie that none of them deserve this kind of death, where a pyre will never scorch their bones.

Zuko knows and he wants to _ scream, _because he cannot save all of them. He is one child in the ocean, and he cannot ferry them all back, and he cannot leave them alone in the shadow of the behemoth above.

They will die, if he leaves them now to bring the boat back, and they will die if he carries as many as he can back.

They will die, and there will be nothing he can do about that.

Nothing.

Zuko refuses.

So he rises to the surface, and spits out ocean water, and takes a deep breath, and watches the waves, and the way they make their chaotic forms, the way they dance.

Dance like fire over his skin.

Dance, in a heavy, pounding, arrhythmic beat that he has felt sway him from slumber and nearly take them all onto rocks.

Dance, as he has seen it do.

Dance, as it does every time La reaches into his mind and

speaks.

This is not something that lives in him, though.

This is a different domain.

(am i permitted?)

(Tui laughs, _ Child, Ask Not Us. Ask Those You Seek To Command) _

(will you help?)

_ (You Have Had My Blessing Since My Light Pressed Against Your Scars) _

_ (revenge) _

_ (I Will Help You, This Day Alone.) _

Zuko takes as deep a breath as he can fit in his lungs, and dives below, to where the waters twist and swirl, and raises his hands and lifts his elbows, like the waves he has seen break against the sides of the ship.

In a rush of bubbles, like the weakening flailing of the soldier’s limbs, he lets the breath out.

_ (Fire is life) _

_ (Breath is life) _

_ (Fire is breath) _

There will be no fire, beneath the sea, where all of the flames are quenched, and where La holds a higher domain than his brother-through-marriage.

Tui holds power.

And Tui gives her blessing to those that will use it wisely.

For she is master over La, and he is bound to listen.

For she reaches into his skull, sinks her moonlight claws into the blazing purple light on his back.

For she lifts his arms, beneath the ocean’s dark surface.

Zuko flutters his fingers against the brine, just so.

He shifts his ankles against the current, just so.

He rolls his shoulders against the ghost of waves, just so.

He speaks.

And La is bound to listen.

-

Katara stumbles back and away from the Monk- no, not simply a Spirit of an extinct people.

The Avatar.

The Avatar, glowing and resplendent with wrathful light as he knocks the offending soldiers over the edge with a raise of his hand.

Katara trembles and stumbles back and away, toward Appa. Toward salvation.

Sokka grabs her by the wrist and nearly tugs her off of her feet as he sprints for the exit, and the one thing the Avatar seems to care about hurting.

There’s something like betrayal that surges through her, as illogical as that is. An agonized anger that doesn’t feel quite like it’s hers pushes up like the ocean rushing out under the path of a falling glacier.

Sokka keeps his hold on Katara, even once they’re mostly safe on the back of Appa. He shifts his grip to hold her palms together. He knows what happens when she panics. Her body trembles and shakes and speaks words she doesn’t even understand- words that the ocean doesn’t hesitate to respond to.

She locks her knees together and focuses on keeping still, focuses on making sure she sends out nothing but silence. The last time she lost control like this, she nearly drowned Sokka.

She shakes with every breath. She can barely hear anything over the Avatar’s screamed out commands to the water. His movements are unbearably loud, and even when she closes her eyes in an attempt to quiet the sound, the reaching fingers of his chi extend even out to her.

_ Rush, Push, Grab, Hold, Take, Freeze- _ the Avatar demands.

For the first time, Katara can hear the ocean make its own demands in return, to a separate person. For once, she is the outside party to another bender. The foreign presence talking to her, speaking to her as if she was water as well, grates.

The ocean hisses like a disturbed cat and demands chi- so much chi, too much for Katara to ever hope to accomplish this maneuver. It is more rebellious and vindictive than any of the water Katara has ever heard speak.

The Avatar gives, and the ocean fulfills its half of the bargain.

As the water bursts onto the deck and begins to enfold its icy chains against the ship, Sokka squawks out a series of frenzied syllables, trying to come across the one, singular combination that the Avatar used.

Katara yanks Sokka down with his hold against her wrists as a blast of razor sharp wind nearly shears his hair off and swings her legs into a crouch on top of the beast. “Yip-yip,” Katara shouts, and rolls her shoulder to clear a path of the freezing water beneath the animal’s feet.

As Appa rises off of the ground, groaning in pain, Katara hears something else, above the Avatar’s commands.

A distant whispering, beneath the sea.

A distant whispering, so distant that she can’t even make out the words.

But the sea responds.

_ The sea responds. _

Katara is not alone.

There are three benders on this ocean. She is not alone.

She doesn’t quite know why that concept fills her with a suffocating dread.

-

Bo huffs out a couple curses as he finishes hauling up the dinghy with six other crewmembers. Despite all of the muscle and callouses he’s built up over the years, bringing up a whole boat absolutely full of armor and people still sucks.

The world beyond their ship was filled with light about a minute ago. No one bothered to raise a fuss about it. They all knew what they were getting into from the second Cook spread the news.

The Avatar glows and kills and died a century ago. That was what Bo had known going into this. He’s a bit less sure of that third option, now, but everything else seems to be holding up, given the shivering bodies, dead to the world, on the deck.

Not dead-dead. Not yet at least. Some of the shivering has started to calm down, but that’s not a particularly good sign. Firebending may not come from the muscles, but a lot of warmth does, and if they stop generating heat this early, it’ll be a snowball’s chance in a volcano for their survival.

Well, chances are fickle. If the Prince thinks they can be saved, they can damn well be saved. He hasn’t given Bo a reason to doubt him so far.

“Two crewmen per soldier,” the Lieutenant announces, “and, Agni, no one drop them.” He scans his present crew, which is an entirely useless gesture, given that he has the list of his crew entirely memorized, and everyone is on deck. “I’ll need half a dozen firebenders to turn our brig into a sauna. Any volunteers?”

No hands go up. Everyone wants to watch the Avatar against their Prince, still.

“Every crewmember that volunteers has my permission to cuss me out once, at any given time.”

Every hand goes into the air. Cook has both up.

The Lieutenant sighs. “Alright. You’re all traitors. I can’t blame you, but I hate all of you.” As he turns to count off his firebenders, he catches sight of Prince Iroh’s hand, firmly in the air with a kindly smile pasted on his face. “You are included in that, with all respect, General.”

“I’m retired,” Iroh says genially.

The Lieutenant takes that as an answers and continues his count of all of the necessary crew-turned-medical staff. The first few volunteers grab the nearest soldiers and start the trek down to the brig.

Bo rolls his shoulders back and steps out of the way for some of the more heavily built crewmembers to take their cargo.

He closes his eyes while he waits his turn, and tries his best to sense out the Prince.

The Prince, whose sunlight is right behind him, and gaining quickly.

“Duck!” Bo barks out, and hits the deck below the railing.

The Prince does not arrive on deck first. Before him - heralding him, perhaps, except for the fact that it’s all really with little fanfare - a dozen or so new half-frozen soldiers dropping onto deck with a coating of ocean water slithering out behind them.

The Prince waits calmly for his own water lift to deliver him onto the railing, much more gracefully than the disturbing _ plop _ of the other soldiers and the small wave that provided them passage.

Or rather, it looks like the Prince. Its gaze is far too vacant to truly be the Prince- no matter what, the Prince stares at everything. If he spaces out, it isn’t with a blank stare, it’s with one so all-consuming that all else ceases to matter.

There’s also the part that his eye cover is off, and the edges of his scar glow a thick, syrupy bluish-purple. But he glows randomly, sometimes, even if it isn’t normally blue.

The glowing is normal, but spacing out? That isn’t Bo’s Prince.

The Impostor turns its cold gaze toward the Lieutenant, and then blinks, once, twice, thrice-

And Prince Zuko looks back out, his scar calming and lowering the glow. He stares at everyone on deck, individually, and then starts out of his stupor and whips around.

“Everyone, get-”

He’s cut off by the wall of water rising from the sea, looming out over the sea, with the glowing figure of the Avatar atop as the maestro of the travesty about to take hold of their ship.

For one moment, in Bo’s fear-hazed mind, he can almost see the physical connection of the eye contact between the Prince and the Avatar. The dual glow of the Avatar’s pale blue and the Prince’s golden orange eyes meeting midway in the mist and battling for dominance.

For one moment, Bo would swear that the Avatar looked… _ afraid. _

And then the wave crashes over the ship, and Bo’s only focus is on staying pressed to the railing and not going overboard and-

When the wave breaks over the ship, it doesn’t keep going. It freezes in place with a great crackling noise that sounds more like cannonfire than ice.

It freezes, over where most of the crew were. Over where all of Bo’s fellows on this almost three year pointless mission might now die after finding their goal.

Bo wants to _ scream, _ as ice coats his rigging and his fellows and his Prince, and damn near everyone on board the ship.

He wants to scream, but instead, his eyes track the Avatar as the glow surrounding it fails and it begins to plummet-

(Bo wishes it would hit the water and stay there)

_ (i want revenge upon it) _

It’s caught by a massive, white furred beast that emerges from the thinning fog, with two blue shapes on its back.

Bo wants to scream, but the cold burns against the back of his throat, and screaming would waste time and effort. He has to- has to-

Oh, Agni, what does he do?

What can he do?

He picks himself up off of the ground and stares up to the top of the iceberg that consumed their ship. It covers half of the deck. It reaches up to the mizzenmast. It’s impossibly large, and there is no human possible way to get rid of all of it before the death count of this battle begins to rise.

There aren’t enough firebenders in Bo’s hometown to melt something this size in any less than a few hours. Hours in which to suffocate and freeze.

Hours they don’t have, with firebenders they don’t possess.

Death tolls ticking up.

Bo props himself up against the railing, and stares at the place where the Prince had stood, right next to Bo, and where the Dragon of the West is breaking his way free of his own prison, only half-consumed by the frozen water and breathing flames.

The enormity of the situation crawls its sharp fingers down Bo’s spine, but it is then that the ice next to Bo sluices to the side in a mad rush of water that makes Bo pull a move from the Prince’s playbook and leap onto the edge of the railing to escape the ice cold rush of water emanating from-

The Prince, crawling out of his icy cocoon and into the air.

But it’s not the Prince, just like it wasn’t when he came out on deck.

He looks empty and cold and righteous and his scar glows- it glows something even darker and deeper than before. Where once it was pale, it is now the endless deep that claws the sanity out of minds and the breaths from lungs.

“No,” he whispers as he cranes his head back to stare up at the enormity of the fresh glacier consuming their ship. “No.”

His hands, wreathed in light as his skin cracks into geometric shapes, shake. They shove against the ice and dig into the frost with knuckles burned white from the cold and the force with which they press.

Lieutenant Jee, who just barely got out of the way of the glacier, comes to stand by Bo’s side, along with everyone else- a round baker’s dozen, the lot of them, including the Dragon of the West, who still struggles to free himself from the ice. He rolls his shoulder and snaps his fingers to generate enough firelight to properly view everything, and steps forward.

“Tui, La,” Jee greets, and nods his head in respect, “help us save our people, I beg of you. We of the flame bow to ye of the water-”

“Save the pleasantries,” the not-Prince spits out, in a voice that isn’t quite his, “and pray. I know you. My waves have known your lungs, as they have known these-” he gestures out to the iceberg- “so I ask for nothing from you than your devotion.”

Jee bows, deeper. “You have it.”

“Not alone, however…” the not-Prince muses, shifting his feet against the deck.

Jee raises his head proudly and casts his lick of fire higher into the air. “I will not abandon Agni, or Prince Zuko. I am fire, my lord and lady, and that cannot be banked any more than water flows uphill. Save my people, and I give you that of mine which I can.”

Not-Prince slams his palms against the ice and it all comes down in one wave, unfrozen in time as much as in texture as it continues its roll against the deck and off of the side, freeing the trapped soldiers inside who gasp for air and collapse to their knees.

The not-Prince burns with purple-blue light, and then his markings begin to fade away and recede, back into the rough skin around the handprint on his back, and the rippled scar tissue around his eye.

“I will hold you to that, Lieutenant.”

Bo releases a breath as whatever made the Prince… not the Prince, leaves him in one final motion.

The Prince takes in one deep, shuddering breath, and stares at Jee, and then Bo, and then his Uncle, and then the rest of the crew in one frenzied swoop of motion-

And crumples to the deck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For once, I met a deadline! 
> 
> This is incredibly unedited, unfortunately, so I don't doubt that there are many a grammar issue hidden within, but I got it done, so that counts for something. Thank you to everyone leaving comments, they warm my soul!
> 
> Happy Holidays to everyone! May the Christmas music and relatives not turn you insane during this holiday season. See you next decade!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY  
HEY
> 
> HEYHEYHEY
> 
> GUESS WHAT??!!
> 
> I got fanart.
> 
> !!!!
> 
> It's beautiful!!!!!!!!
> 
> Give the creator some love!!!!!!!!! Thanks to ivyadrena for this lovely, lovely, absolutely gorgeous piece of fanart - my first, in fact.
> 
> Link:  
https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/189875193757/ivyadrena-hey-zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa-about-that

When Aang snaps awake, it’s to the sight of the girl in the blue parka leaning over him with an unreadable expression on her face. As the distant fog of sleep clears away, he recalls her name is Katara.

Whatever led him to waking up here, he has no idea. Last thing he remembers… well, first it’s the way that strange ship had emerged from the fog, but now that he keeps thinking back on it, he remembers their half-baked misdirect with the flares, and then Appa’s slow rise into the sky.

Given that they were in the sky to fight the two hostile ships coming for the village, he has no idea why he’s _ waking up _in a Water Tribe igloo or why Katara has that look on her face. Did they fight? Did they run? Did he pass out from the elevation change for some reason?

He gets nauseous if he keeps thinking about it, for some reason, so he chooses to focus on the pissed off waterbender that hangs over him like Koh hangs over doomed cribs.

She stares at him for a few seconds, with her hair loops swaying in the wind and her eyes cold and confused.

Once, when the Councilmaster from the Northern Temple visited, she and her two closest friends cleared the nearest peak of snow in the space of seconds. Their prayers to Lì lacked the subtlety of the South’s preferred style. It echoed into the air like the crash of a rockslide, and the tempest that emerged from their fingertips hit the neighboring mountain with the devastatingly beautiful impacts that the Northern Temple made their creed.

For one moment, the snow shivered against the cliffsides. Then the avalanche roared down the side of the mountain at a deafening, horrifying pace.

Katara’s eyes remind him of that moment after the impact. The way the world shivered and questioned if absolute destruction was the answer to the undeniable force.

The cliff decided quickly. Aang isn’t so sure he’ll realize when Katara begins to make her descent down the mountainside.

She presses her fingers (cold, _ cold, _ fingers) against his neck to check the nervous beat of his pulse. Having ascertained his living status, she takes her hand away from his neck and pushes herself up using Aang’s calf as a leverage point (ow, ow, ow, ow).

“He’s awake. And alive,” she calls out. The cold ice against his back can’t quite match with the restrained frost she says the words with.

“Let him up, Katara,” the distant voice of Scowling says.

Katara gives one last look down at Aang and then steps back and away. Aang wastes no time at all to sit up and scramble back from the two hostile - siblings? Sounds about right - on the other side of the igloo.

His staff is on their side of the room, currently being held down by Scowling’s legs while he sits over the top of it. His warrior’s makeup is mostly gone, but some of the painted mask remains, smudged by the edges of his face and under his eyes. Katara does not sit, although she wavers where she stands. Their combined unity and hoarding of his things likely isn’t an accidental gesture.

“So,” Scowling says, with an air of cheeriness belying the storm in his eyes, “you’re the Avatar, huh?”

The memories hit like the wind against the cliff face.

(Pai Sho pieces in Fire Nation colors

Fire burning the sky to pieces

The sky tearing the fire to shreds

Appa’s hurt Appa’s hurt _ Appa’s hurt _

Light)

He remembers the burning light, the way it took hold of his body in a vice grip of terror. The way it rose out of him with a rush of something that felt almost like pain but-

The way he felt so cold and empty as the light took control of his limbs and started wrenching motions from his limbs that were too fluid and unnatural and prayers he no longer remembers the hand positions to. The sick jerking of his body not under his control. The hair thin connection he still felt to his skin. The desperate, clawing suffocation.

He remembers the dim sensation of victory. He remembers rising, and remembers the fluid motions freezing and

And that for one second, the terror hadn’t just been his own.

Appa had gotten hurt, and it had made him angry, yes, but- But it made the light angrier. 

Worse than that, something had made the light _ afraid. _

Something burning and drowning and suffocating in equal measure.

He knows that much.

He remembers the dim sensation of his body moving. He remembers that he prayed and bent something new without praying to its god. What he did with it? Well, that’s certainly a question, and not one he can answer.

Piecing together the motivations and actions of everything that led him to this point makes him nauseous all over again. A deep ache spikes through his skull.

He hides his wince with a duck of his head.

_ (Never show weakness! _ One of the infinite strings of council members had whispered to him harshly. _ Your weakness is your strength, and you must never allow your opponents to know your strength until it’s too late.) _

Aang draws in a huge breath and painstakingly raised his eyebrows out of the furrow they want to adopt and lift his lips into a smile friendly enough to not be disturbing before bringing his head back up.

“Yes,” Aang responds with equal pleasantness, “I am. Anything I can do for you before I go back to the Temple, or-”

“I don’t think your Temple will be very welcoming,” Scowling interrupts, “not to you, at least.” Katara takes in a breath and lightly taps the top of her companion’s head. Scowling sits back further against the wall and runs his fingers over his boomerang.

Katara nods her head briefly in his direction and then seems to forcefully shake herself out of the frigid exterior she’d adopted somewhere in the space between Appa taking off and now.

“Sorry,” she says, “we’ve- we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. You may call me Katara. I waterbend. I have been the Interim Chieftess of the Southern Water Tribe for twenty-three moons.” After a short silence, Katara shifts her foot very carefully into Scowling’s side.

“Ow- ugh, fine. You can call me Sokka. I don’t bend. I’m Katara’s brother. I’ve been Interim Chieftan for- uh, whatever she said.” Sokka rubs at his side and raises an eyebrow at Aang.

Their phrasing isn’t lost on Aang. They don’t trust him- of course they don’t, he’s a Spirit to them. Only a fool tells a known Spirit what their name is.

Two can play at that game.

“You may call me Shen,” Aang says. “I’m- well, I’m the Avatar, I guess, but I only know how to airbend so far. When- not possessed. I’ve been the Avatar since birth.”

Sokka stiffens, and Aang can almost feel the way his spine stretches out as he sits up and something predatory enters his gaze. “Only air?” he asks.

Aang waits for an embarrassingly long time before he realizes he’s supposed to talk. “...Yes?”

“No waterbending?” Sokka interrogates again.

“Not yet.”

Katara speaks up. “Do you need a teacher?”

Sokka growls warningly, but Aang doesn’t focus on that and instead gives a hesitant smile. “Yes, actually,” Aang says, “are you offering?”

Sokka smacks his palm against the wall with a resounding noise and leaps to his feet. He paces a few feet in each direction, and with every step he seems to sink lower in his pace until every footfall has the phantom of claws clacking against the ice. When he snarls out a fluid rush of syllables that might be code or curses, his canines look almost a little bit too long.

Katara just closes her eyes and leans against the icy wall. The dim lighting of the winter sun pouring through the cracks of the snow bricks refract through the crystal beads in her hair loops and send blinks of light over her features and the solemn furrow of her brow.

Aang blinks. “Uh, sorry, am I missing something?”

Sokka gives out another rush of syllables and then turns toward Katara.

Aang shrinks back to the sidelines as the siblings begin an argument, half through words and half through their facial expressions and body language.

“You know I have to, Sokka,” Katara says. She speaks with passion, but the edges of defeat in her tone aren’t to go unnoticed either. “It is my responsibility.”

“Who cares about that responsibility? It died with half of our damn Tribe,” Sokka hisses. The wolf remains in his posture, in his slight hunch and the placement of his arms. “We have a duty to those that remain-”

“I have a duty to those yet to come!” Katara yells. “It falls to me to _ protect, _ and in order to protect, I have to teach! I can’t teach if I don’t know a damn thing about what I’m teaching-”

“No one ever thought it would come to this, Katara! Who in La’s name would think that we’d be reduced to this? It shouldn’t be our job if it abandons our people.”

“You’re right, it isn’t our job. It’s mine. It’s tradition. The Avatar needs a teacher, and he chose our Tribe, but our Tribe can’t help him alone. If I don’t go North, I can’t learn how to teach him. If I don’t learn, we could all turn to ash by next year. If I don’t go North now, I never will, and the next time the Fire Nation attacks, I won’t be able to help anyone and the Avatar will be gone again. All of this could be for- for nothing.” Katara’s passion tangles in on itself. Her anger and certainty close her throat and trip her tongue.

It’s fascinating to watch them speak. To watch the ebb and flow of their bodies as they step forward and lean back and gesture. To watch the attack and the surrender of every exchange. There is more complexity in the way they shift their weight than in a thousand poems.

“I gave my word to dad that I would protect you, Katara! I swore an oath of blood and ice that I wouldn’t let you come to harm as long as I could. You froze on that ship, don’t think I didn’t see that. You’re not ready to be alone, and I won’t let you.”

“It’s not your choice, is it? It’s mine. And I choose to follow the paths of my forebearers. I’ve been chosen to teach the Avatar by the Spirits. I will not throw away their choice so lightly. If I freeze again, then that is on me alone.”

“I don’t give a damn about tradition-”

“I do!” Katara screams back. “I care! I care because I’m the only one left who really _ can! _ Everyone else is gone, Sokka! Every last one of the people who could bend our waters is _ gone. _If I don’t carry on their legacy, who will?” She flexes her hand and drops her head. “The Spirits are giving me the permission I need to go. They’re giving their blessings to me. They’re giving their protection.”

Sokka goes quiet, too. He’s realizing this is a losing battle. The wolf aching to rise out of his skin is tamed back into the cave once more.

“Sokka,” Katara says one more time, in a broken tone of voice, with her arms slowly coming to wrap around her own stomach, “if I don’t use Tui’s blessings, Mom will have died for nothing.”

Sokka freezes. “And what if you’re wrong? What if you die out there? What if the Fire Nation attacks while you’re gone?”

Katara tosses her head high, but keeps her arms wrapped around her midsection. “If I die, then you will be proven right, and we’ll all die anyway. If I survive, then we have _ hope _ for the world.” She gives a tiny smile. “Besides, if they do attack, they’ll have their Interim Chieftan behind them the whole way.”

In the ensuing charged silence, Aang turns his palms to the roof and twines his fingers together in the smallest of invocations to Lì, sending his staff back into his hands soundlessly.

“Alright,” Sokka says, and turns to face Aang. “I hope you can comfortably fit three people on that thing’s saddle. My sister is going to teach you how to waterbend. And then learn how to waterbend. And then teach you how to waterbend some more. And I will be there too, because I made a promise.”

Katara furrows her brow and then falls straight into indignation as her hands fall to her sides. “Sokka, no! You’re Chief-”

“And you’re Chieftess,” Sokka bites back, “but it doesn’t look to be stopping you. I made an oath. I will not go back on that oath. You said it yourself, this is the best way to protect the future. Gran-Gran ran our village while dad was gone before. She can do it again.” Sokka holsters his boomerang with purpose. “Besides, if dad can be Chief on a different continent, we can sure as hell do it while helping to protect the Spirit of the World.”

Katara shakes with sheer intensity. Her fists ball up. She takes in a deep breath, as though preparing to speak again-

And lets it out in a woosh. The tension leaves her body in one fluid motion, like it drains into ice as snowmelt rage.

“You better go get us supplies then,” Katara says. “I’ll- I’ll tell Gran-Gran. We’ll need to get out when the sun gets below the horizon, so we’ve got an hour. Get what you can- what’s useful. Food and weapons. I’ll get supplies and pass on the news.” She rounds on Aang next. Her eyes are still cold. There is still ice waiting at the top of that mountain. “You stay here. Don’t leave the village. If you don’t have to, don’t even leave the hut. We might be safe for now because you froze those ships, but if you alert them to our position, we’re done for.”

She sweeps out of the igloo with her brother trailing behind.

Aang sits in the steadily dimming igloo, and takes a long, long moment to question everything he’s seen in the few minutes he’s been awake. There are tensions he doesn’t know that spread across their shoulders. Traditions and duties he knows nothing of. Missing people and the ghost of blood in the snow.

He has no idea what in Fēng’s four corners will come of anything they’ve spoken of.

But it appears he has a teacher, and an honor guard, and a trip to the North Pole.

Destiny won’t let him rest one moment longer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some clarifiers: The South was abandoned by the Avatar as much as the Air Temples were, and they take it a little personally.
> 
> If any of you beautiful people feel like making something inspired by this, or riffing off of it, or doing just about anything with it, go for it! I'm perpetually overexcited and I love seeing whatever anyone is willing to show me. I'd love if you'd share it with me, but it is by no means a requirement. 
> 
> Come talk to me at my tumblr as a message or as an ask or ominous message on a misted over mirror! I am a well-behaved housecat when it comes to social interaction. Questions? Comments? Concerns? Rituals for unspeakable demons? I welcome it. https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/
> 
> Fanart link again:  
https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/189875193757/ivyadrena-hey-zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa-about-that
> 
> Welcome to 2020, everybody. May your reading list never falter and your comments and kudos be plenty.


	8. Chapter 8

Katara does not cry while Appa rises into the darkened sky. She does not cry because this is what destiny is supposed to look like. This is Tui’s Pull out into the world. This is the start of her journey to be a true waterbender.

She does not cry, even though she wants to.

There was a feeble hope in her, when she turned Appa around through the fog, back home, that maybe she could stay. Maybe the Avatar would have already learned to speak with the waves. Maybe she could exhaust herself dragging her village to safety and just stay where the waters knew her.

Maybe the South would let her guard it. Maybe it wouldn’t strip her from it as it had her mother, and her father, and as it commanded Gran-Gran to come from the North. Maybe her home could be kind to her.

Maybe the Avatar alone would leave, come sunset, and Gran-Gran’s predictions could be satisfied without her home casting her away as surely as the tide casts away the shells it doesn’t care for. Maybe the distant call of the water on the breeze was wrong. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to follow it away.

_ Maybe, _ she had half-prayed as she waited for the Avatar to wake.

Katara doesn’t cry.

For centuries, it has always been tradition that the Avatar learn waterbending from one Tribe. It’s an honor for each Tribe, and the Tribe is bound to protect the Avatar as they learn. It is one of the reasons why relations between the North and South had gotten steadily worse as the years passed. Both wanted the honor of protecting the Spirit of the World.

Both wanted the protection of the Spirit of the World.

Gran-Gran said that the North had gotten rid of the secondary position of Chieftess for the sake of appealing to Earth Kingdom Avatars used to centralized power. Not that Katara had understood most of those words when she was young. 

The South kept moving their village to have their strength not in fortresses of ice but in the mobility of their home. It was a gesture for Air Nomad Avatars. It seems that it worked, given the hunched figure of Shen by Appa’s reins.

The Avatar is of the South, now, and he holds his debt to her people. Even though it feels like she is selling her soul away, she is securing a future for everyone she is leaving behind. She wishes Sokka didn’t come with, since it means they’re both abandoning their duties, but she can’t deny that it’s a good idea to have insurance with her claim. She is but one bender, and the North is supposed to have an armada. It would be easy for the North to lay claim on that which is hers if they kill her first.

Katara does not cry, because she is a teacher now. She is the only one born with Southern Waters in her veins. She is the only one that can do this.

She is the only one.

She does not cry.

The three of them are silent as they slip above the clouds, and as they pass over the distant specks of firelight that are the Fire Nation Ships.

They fly onwards.

Katara breaks the silence as the sunrise crests the horizon. “We should make some public stops before we head straight for the North. We need to drag the soldiers away from the village. Every invader ship is looking for the Avatar.”

Shen rolls the reins over his knuckles and rubs his fingers over their grooves. “I want to go to the Southern Temple first,” he announces. “There might be allies there, and there’s- there’s something my airbending teacher told me about. I need to find it.”

Katara turns to Sokka and gives him a slight upward nod and eyebrow raise of question.

Sokka mulls the words around for a bit before grabbing out the map that Katara had carefully packed in with her scrolls. “The Southern Temple isn’t a very public spot,” he says. The strategist in him slowly comes to life like a polar leopard emerging from hibernation. “We’ll need to make at least a few stops on the way in major areas.” He furrows his brow as he looks over the map.

“We should stay by the coast if we can,” Katara says, tossing in her two cents, “At least, at first. The ocean is good practice for waterbending, but it’s also the best place to get spotted by Fire Nation patrols. We’ll need that for the first few stops to pull the ships away from the village, but after that it’s an unnecessary danger. I’ll still want a water source nearby, but there’s plenty of rivers on the western coast of the Earth Kingdom.”

“Good point…” Sokka mutters, distractedly. “How far can - what’s this thing’s name again? - whatever, how far can he go?” 

Shen shrugs. “Appa and I never really tested that out, but he did get me down to your Tribe in a day, when it was storming. I’d say around seventy miles or so in a day, but he needs snacks and a lot of rest for speeds like that. If it’s consistent, maybe around forty miles a day.”

Sokka blinks, and then looks down at Appa appreciatively. “Nice to know he has distance as well as speed. This makes our job a lot easier. Let’s see… near water and close by- Kyoshi Island, maybe? I don’t remember how famous it is, but it’ll give- uh- Appa some food. After that… Gaoling looks pretty big, but it’s further east than I’d like. Not as much visibility and it eats up more of our time going North.”

Katara rubs her wrists and twines her fingers through a few of the adjectives of waterbending. She isn’t good at using them yet. She saw Shen use some of them when he was in the Avatar State, but they, along with most of the vocabulary he used in between the words she already understood, didn’t really translate as anything to her. “We need to be quick about this,” she says softly. “When the Fire Nation attacks again, we need to be ready.”

Sokka leans closer to her, seemingly unconsciously, to provide comfort in the almost mindless way he always does. “There’s Omashu, and a little settlement across the channel and in the mountains,” He nods once, and then again, firmer. “Toss in a handful of other villages, and so long as we make a few coastal appearances, we’re good to go.” He looks up from his study of the map, where his fingers have been carefully measuring distances and tapping out patterns. “Do you really need what’s in the Temple?”

“It’s important,” Shen insists. “I don’t want to waste your time. I need to know what Gyatso was going to give me.”

He says ‘Gyatso’ like Sokka used to say ‘dad’. With a thoughtless, childlike devotion to the concept of paternal love.

Katara does not cry. She just nods mutely, and sits back, and twists her fingers through her conjugations of the word _ evaporate _ and the transition from _ gently _to harsher queries.

Behind her, the ices of her home glitter, and the waves crash their goodbyes to their only true speaker.

Behind her, somewhere, Gran-Gran is gathering the village in a mountain conclave and snuffing out their fires as the fog breathes its last. She is hiding her people. Her legacy. She is protecting the children and shushing their cries.

She is speaking to the Spirits to give their blessings, as all Chieftesses do for voyages. She is tossing carved idols into a dish of snowmelt and reading the signs she is given. She is dancing with the waves.

She is home.

And Katara is the one high in the sky, far from the reaches of the ocean. Katara is the one leaving everyone behind.

_ (We’re not leaving until we find the waterbender! _

_ It’s me. Take me as your prisoner.) _

_ (I’m sorry, Gran-Gran, but I need to teach the Avatar. _

_ I need to leave you. I need to follow my path as a waterbender.) _

This is what destiny is supposed to look like.

Right?

-

Iroh waits, silent, by his nephew’s bedside and does not release the flames gathering in his throat.

Zuko was as cold as ice for a few horrible, horrible minutes. Minutes in which Iroh’s mind wouldn’t stop seeing a stone wall in place of a glacier. Minutes in which Zuko had seemed a few years older and miles away. Minutes in which both of Iroh’s precious children merged into one corpselike figure atop a Fire Nation cot. 

Much like the rest of the rescued soldiers and the especially affected member’s of Iroh’s own crew, his heavy, soaked layers were stripped away for the standard black underclothes. The Agni Kai bracelet on his left arm glints softly in the firelight.

Everyone is in the recovery room (or, what was a few hours ago, the mess hall), bending warmth into the air and dragging braziers into the room, tending to fires and helping Cook make broth. The thin dividers of cloth one of the Ensigns had quietly helped set up are the only things hiding Zuko away from the watching, wary eyes of the crew.

Zuko had warmed up steadily as all of the available firebending crew carefully manipulated their chi into the air around them and lit braziers. Iroh had sped up the process by channeling heat to his palms and keeping them pressed against Zuko’s temples.

Of course, the problem then became that Zuko’s skin started weeping summer rainwater, like ice melting in a skillet.

His initial worry for that was cast aside as the glowing blue lines pushed to the surface for a moment and then dispersed their glow into his nephew’s scorching snowmelt.

Sweating out a fever is no stranger to Iroh and his time on the battlefield, and he supposes it’s no different to sweat out a possession. Zuko seems to be in the unenviable position of doing both simultaneously, despite the chill of his skin.

With the fever-warm heat of the water and the sweat from both Zuko himself and Iroh’s palms, it felt eerily like blood sluicing away onto Iroh’s hands. He had to leave the room when it first started, to wash the water away from his hands and scrub them clean of the foreign warmth until they were frigid and raw.

It’s ridiculous. He knows that much.

It doesn’t change the swooping of his stomach every time his hand comes away from his nephew’s forehead, tacky with warm liquid. It doesn’t change that, but it lets him breathe once the initial panic is gone.

Zuko is at the normal state of pyrexia for a firebender, now, although he does tend to run hotter than the average soldier. Iroh keeps a cold cloth on hand, just to be safe, and to keep his anxieties at bay. The only reason why Zuko is still being kept in the recovery room is because the crew seem to take comfort in having their Prince close by.

Despite his temperature and chi levels being back to normal - at a frightening pace, if you ask Iroh - Zuko has yet to even twitch.

None of the soldiers he rescued have yet to wake.

None of them have died, either.

Iroh will take what comfort he can in that.

The cloth shifts softly as someone else enters the candlelit realm that Iroh and Zuko alone had occupied. The disturbances in the rough sailcloth turn their creases into creeping, shadowy monsters as the firelight flickers madly.

Iroh exhales softly and lets the barest trace of flame exit with it. It’s a warning as much as it is an exercise in self control. He could burn this whole ship down right now and still feel so desperately angry that he could storm Ba Sing Se all over again, just on his own.

But Iroh has been very, very angry for a very, very long time. He has never truly stopped being angry.

He has hated his father and his mother and his grandfather and grandmother and every Avatar and every ancestor and every Spirit. He has hated walls and seas and cots and the field medic that looked at him with stoic eyes, with his son’s crown in her bloodstained fingers. He has hated his brother and flames and the sun up above.

He has hated the Earth Kingdom for their sins carved in granite and gravel dust, and he has hated the Fire Nation for their sharp reverence to the burning glory of the horrors of war. Now, he hates the Water Tribes and Air Nomads for the sake of the pale child with the mark of his trials wrapped in gold against his left arm.

Iroh hates and hates and hates _ so much. _

He has known true anger. The kind that makes him spit flames and commit atrocities- worse, he has known the dispassionate muteness that makes his brother do the same.

Iroh cannot tell if it is better to be desperately, horribly angry, or horrifyingly empty.

He has never known the latter.

He has only ever known how to wield his anger properly, and make it into a deep-seated determination that boils his blood.

_ (There is an old joke that has long since grown stale which is: _

_ If Sozin was not already dead by the time the Dragon rose, then he would have gotten burnt alive by the babe in a cradle.) _

(Iroh has always felt that they gave Sozin far too much credit.

Iroh does, after all, aim to burn his legacy away.)

But Iroh breathes out the tiniest lick of flame, and remains very quiet, and very still.

“There’s not much you can do for him right now, General,” comes Lieutenant Jee’s soft, careful tone from over Iroh’s shoulder. “He hosted two Primordials. That’s the kind of thing that hurts come morning. Chi exhaustion doesn’t even begin to cover it.”

“I’ll take your word for it. After all, you have personal experience with the subject, don’t you?” Iroh cannot see Lieutenant Jee, but he can practically feel the man stiffen and freeze.

Jee lets the silence stretch, onward and onward.

Iroh does nothing to impede that.

Eventually, nearly hidden beneath the buzz of conversation outside of the bubble of safety within the cloth walls, Jee murmurs, “Yes.” And then, slightly louder, but much more resigned, “Yes, I did. I do. I…” He trails off into silence.

Someone outside tells a particularly good joke, and the muffled laughter seems like it mocks the both of them.

Iroh lifts his head very calmly from his vigil, and straightens his spine into iron. “I would very much like a conversation with you, Lieutenant,” he says, quite softly, “and I am going to make the prediction that neither of us will come out of it unscathed if we do not have tea.”

Jee goes perfectly still out of the corner of Iroh’s eye, and then slumps forward on a miniscule level. “Ah,” he says. “That’s not a request, is it?”

Iroh turns around completely. The instant rush of nerves from letting Zuko out of his sight is quickly squashed as the Dragon of the West starts to play with its prey. 

Jee stands to attention on instinct.

The Dragon of the West gives a disturbing little smile and whispers, “I’d hope you’d know the answer to that, Lieutenant.”

Jee tilts from heel to toe once, and then nods sharply. “I’ll keep watch. I’m going to assume you don’t want anyone else to touch your teapot.”

The Dragon of the West smiles wider, with a few too many teeth to be friendly, and rises from his nephew’s bedside. If there is one thing Iroh can trust the Lieutenant on, it is his unflinching and occasionally inconvenient honesty. His perceptiveness is not to be underestimated either.

The Dragon of the West moves in an unerring line for the exit to the candlelit sanctuary, and Jee moves aside to let him pass. Once he is out, Iroh takes a few breaths, carefully glances over the rest of the room, and slips into the halls.

Iroh’s teapot is in his own quarters, along with his bricks of tea leaves.

If he heats the water with his own chi instead of traditional flame, or crushes the brick with more haste and force than is necessary, no one is there to see it.

If he is afraid that every second he spends out of his nephew’s room is another chance for that second sun to go dark, no one knows but him.

The Dragon of the West does not run. He does not scramble. He does not move with undue haste. His teapot does not spill a single drop as he arrives back.

(The man within the Dragon would love nothing more than to sprint, but the Dragon has the rage and the hatred and the bitter anger to fuel it, and the man has too much softness to triumph over this necessary show of strength.)

So the Dragon of the West takes his teapot with him and sets it between the two of them, at the foot of his nephew’s cot, and waits for his opponent to make the first move.

Jee fiddles with his cuffs for a long while. He glances up occasionally, but the Dragon gives him nothing to go off of.

Finally, Jee sighs and looks down completely, at an old stain that's either blood or stew.

“It was almost sixteen years ago. I was still an Ensign, on a patrol boat around the Kingdom. We were sent to search around Chameleon Bay. There’d been a rash of destroyed ships over there- older models, and all that, we thought we wouldn’t have any issues. Command said to prepare for pirates, or rebels, so we did just that.”

Jee breaks off, and the Dragon finally pours him a cup of tea. They sit in silence as the steam wafts through the air with the scent of green tea seeping over their invisible battle lines.

“And?” The Dragon prompts.

“And we were wrong. We were _ completely _ wrong and- _ Agni,” _ Jee curses. “We were heading out toward the Claws when our watchman caught sight of this… this _ thing _ in the water. It was a good twenty feet long, and bright white, and it just floated on up to us. It was peaceful. It didn’t attack. It had scales and forelimbs and it just- just whined when it saw us and tried to get up onto deck. It’s back was bleeding- these massive gashes that had all of this stuff caught in them. It looked like agony.

“It’s eyes were almost human. Baby blue and the size of dinner plates, but they were just so wide and innocent and all it was looking for was some _ Spirit-damned help.” _ Jee takes a sip of his tea to stave off the expression forming on his face. “And my Captain told us to kill it.”

Jee’s face twists in disgust and he drowns it in tea. The Dragon patiently sips alongside him, as emotionless and searching as he pleases.

“My Captain wanted to kill it and sell it at a- a _ fucking market. _Like a poacher, not a serviceman. He wanted to kill something innocent to make some coin. Something looking for help, bleeding and pleading and waiting, with its blood coating his hands. It’s been one and a half decades and I still remember how revolted I was. I still remember how scared it looked when everyone grabbed out their weapons and went for it.”

The Dragon sets his tea down carefully. “And did you join them?” he says, carefully neutral.

Jee looks up from the floor and meets the Dragon’s eyes with a fire and ferocity that the Dragon was used to seeing on prisoners of war. “No,” he spits. “I wasn’t a monster. And neither was that thing. It was a child. A child that didn’t deserve to die. So I grabbed out my sword and I stood in front of them, and I waited to die alongside it if I had to. I told them that what they were going to do was wrong and dishonorable. My Captain- he didn’t care about honor. But he did care about insubordination. I think that’s what made him do what he did.

“He told everyone to stand aside. He convinced me that I’d convinced him. He said that he wanted to tame the creature, so I let him get near it.” Jee downs the rest of his tea the way most men down alcohol. He tightens his legs closer to his body. “And then he had the rest of the crew restrain me, and he took my own damn sword and started to flay it right in front of me.”

The Dragon hums a soft noise and pours another cup of tea. “And why didn’t you try to firebend your way out? Most soldiers know a few good self-defense katas.”

“Because,” Jee mutters, and looks to the shadows against the cloth, and to the muffled conversation outside, “I wasn’t a firebender, then.”

The Dragon lowers his eyebrows into a considering expression. “You weren’t trained?”

“No, I wasn’t a firebender. My flame couldn’t extend out of my body. It was too weak.” And then Jee snaps his fingers and the space between his thumb and forefinger gains a thin, tightly controlled bar of flame extending up a few feet.

The Dragon considers this. He stops and thinks. And keeps thinking. And then he takes his tea and slugs it back. He’s beginning to think he should’ve brought something stronger from his quarters. “Continue, then,” he says, pouring himself another cup.

Jee extinguishes the extra firelight and tries to sit up straighter. “They killed it- butchered it, really. Skinned the damned thing while I watched. While it screamed and struggled and they shoved fire down its throat. It didn’t die prettily. Then the Captain came over with my sword, intending to do me the same courtesy to set an example.”

The silence stews for a while longer. The Dragon lets it.

“That _ thing? _It was either a test, or a Spirit-Child. Maybe both. Whatever it is? We failed, and I failed it.” Jee sets his cup down with more force than necessary. “And I would’ve been glad to take the whole lousy ship down with it.”

“You don’t strike me as a particularly mutinous man, Lieutenant.”

“Then give me a reason and some time, General. That’s all I’ll ever need.” Jee picks up the teapot himself and pours himself a cup. He doesn’t splash a drop.

The Dragon inclines his head and doesn’t comment on the disrespect. “What happened next?”

“La came for us, and I went willingly. Everyone else didn’t. They all struggled and screamed and I didn’t care. I didn’t care because that was what that thing had done as well. I was the only one that knew that I deserved it, for letting something innocent get tortured. Tui came for us, and I welcomed her in. They both took my body and they used it to take down the whole ship. To drown every last person that held a sword and fire against the thing. To take them into the riptides and never let them back out.

“And then somewhere between dying and living, I woke up. La was there. I think he said- he said that I should’ve died with everyone else, but Tui took pity on me. Her and her brother. Said I deserved to try one more time. Didn’t seem happy about it. When I woke up from that, I was on the beach of Crescent Island, and I could firebend. It had been a month since the ship had gone missing. No one else survived. All of the records died with the ship, so everyone assumed I was just on shore leave while everyone else was killed by pirates.”

The Dragon downs his tea again. It’s good that this isn’t his favorite kind, otherwise it would be a waste to drink them like this, without savoring them. Then again, this isn’t really a conversation for savoring things.

Jee finishes off the pot and stands before the Dragon can begin to excuse him.

“I don’t know all of the details about the Agni Kai,” Jee says, staring at the band wrapped around Zuko’s arm balefully, “but I know that he shouldn’t have been challenged. He was fighting for good men not to die. For innocents. I don’t know who decided it would be best to mutilate him like that. I don’t know why the Firelord thought it would be best to banish him. But I know that he didn’t deserve it.”

“When Zuko is ready, perhaps he will tell you all. Or perhaps he will never be ready. But know this: you are correct, Captain.”

Jee gives a tiny scoff. “I understand you’re retired, General, but there’s a long way between Lieutenant and Captain.”

“And I understand you’re a good man who has the best interests of this Nation, its people, and the Spirits at heart,” Iroh says, as he gathers up the cups and teapot from the floor and rises the set them on Zuko’s side table. “I trusted you with my nephew’s life, today. I do not do that lightly.” He smiles - genuinely, this time - and winks. “And besides, I am still a Prince of our Nation. Perhaps I am disgraced, but I am not without privileges. Such as the ability to promote officers as I see fit.”

Captain Jee blinks.

-

Somewhere in the far North, there is a girl knelt over a pond.

Her hair is bone white where it spreads over her back in a loose curtain, and her eyes are pale blue. She has always felt as though she was supposed to carry something on her spine. She has always felt that her skin is too soft and yielding.

In the pond, two fish dance, black and white, back and forth, Push and Pull.

In her dreams they call her a sacrifice.

In her dreams, she sees knives and fire.

In her dreams, when she smiles, she has a hundred teeth.

In her dreams, when she laughs, schools of fish run from her.

Sometimes she yearns for those dreams. For smiles and laughter to make men run from her in fear. For the fire and knives at her side.

The new moon is a blankness, far above her head.

And between her hands, snakes of water glow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Someone back on work of my kin said they wanted the Jee backstory and then I was on a really long car trip with my phone dead so I wound up daydreaming a whole other sideplot for this. so if you're that person: congrats, you got your wish.  
Jee: Protecting Children Since 84 AG
> 
> I'm desperately trying not to strangle myself in plot threads. I'm unsure if its working. I think there's a garrote hidden somewhere in the mix too.
> 
> I'm trying to wrangle next chapter into being Zuko POV so here's to hoping that works out better than it has the last couple of times I've tried to get the writing juice to work properly.
> 
> Comment if you wish! Your speculations give me inspiration and your keysmashes bring me joy!
> 
> Feed your questions to my tumblr:  
https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/


	9. Chapter 9

Zuko wakes - or perhaps he doesn’t - floating.

For a long time, he stares. Up and up and up, at the darkness beckoning around him. The stars - countless stars, unreadable and infinite - streaming the black sky with bright dots of light.

And then gently, ever so gently, he sinks his weight forward, until he stands, and the whole infinite reaches of light stretch around him. There is no floor. There is no ceiling. Seemingly, he stands on nothing, just endless darkness. Cold and black. Bright and undeniable.

He stands - or perhaps he doesn’t - on a contradiction.

And then he falls.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down.

Down-

The breath is knocked out of him immediately upon collision with the ground. The world shivers on impact, spreading out from him like ripples in a pond. Like he is floating again, on the skin of water, but it looks like solid ground- or, solid, until it starts swirling under him.

A pounding ache spreads through his skull. Something tangles on the edges of his mind, an impossible wave that he cannot quantify, frozen in the act of crashing. Close enough that he can almost touch it, too far for him to reach, stuck in the space next to where he should be. Just slightly out of sync, and somehow so incredibly potent-

“You shouldn’t be here, little lamb,” three voices call, eerie in their synchrony. One is impossibly deep, the next raspy and hoarse, the last echoing and airy, despite its authority. “A little bit to the left, and we wouldn’t have caught you before you hit the Spirit World. You’re too close.”

Zuko presses his hand against the ground and it solidifies with his certainty that it will be solid. The world itself goes sharper and more real, in fact, the more he believes it should be, but it still tremors. “Too close to what?” he asks. His voice echoes in his own ears.

“To truth, perhaps,” the deep voice muses.

“To what you have lost,” the hoarse voice disagrees.

“To that which you have been and will be again,” the echoing voice decides.

Zuko pushes himself up to his knees, and warily looks up towards where the voices emanate from.

Three women stand, each with the same face and the same crooked, jagged grin, the same dark skin and the same dark hair in a messy halo of black curls, the same style of robes that climb up to their necks and obscure their limbs in thick fabric, the same dark eyes. The one furthest to the left is the shortest, and she wears a brown so deep that it seems black. The one in the center wears vivid green, a head taller than her leftmost sibling. The one on the right has slate gray consuming her form completely, and is similarly a head taller than her sibling in the center.

“Am I dead?” Zuko asks, a numb dread filling his bones.

If he died- fuck. Fuck. Uncle will blame himself, no matter what. He’s already lost one child he cared about, and even though Zuko must be nothing compared to Lu Ten, it would still sting for Uncle. Worse, Uncle might not even be alive.

Uncle might not be alive.

He could be dead.

Rotting.

At the bottom of the ocean.

Frozen.

Bleeding out.

<strike> mutilated, cast aside with only shame and a burning creature that is him locked away beneath skin that doesn’t feel like his </strike>

The crew might be dead. Zuko doesn’t-

What is the last thing he remembers?

Terror. Terror. Numbing and deep and yet, here, it somehow feels so distant. It doesn’t feel like it’s enough. It feels like what he felt outside of here is empty and cushioned, like he was feeling only half of what he should’ve been. And not like it’s the distance of a memory.

The wave, frozen on the edges of his mind, gives the briefest twitch, and the ground under him goes swirling and rippling again, for a moment, and he nearly falls to join it as a wave of an emotion he’s trying to place gusts over him harder than any gale.

He remembers the fear, even though it doesn’t feel like it was enough. He remembers the desperation. The helplessness. The way that an endless anger had risen from his skin.

The way it felt to sink back, and sink down, and sink through, and feel something else pass him as it rose. Like he was in the deep waters, blind and holding onto his breath, and hoping that whatever ghosted past him with a rush of biting scales and water currents was not hunting for his blood.

The way it felt to not have his own body. The way it felt to be blind in his own form, except for the rush of emotions that came free of him.

The way he’d blinked out of it, for one second, to find the Avatar poised above, glowing and horrifying and wielding a wave as a bludgeon. The way that the Avatar had, for a second, drawn back beneath his gaze.

The way that the wave ate him whole. Him and everyone else.

“I’m dead,” he murmurs again, but it isn’t a question. It’s a statement.

“Not in the way you think,” the woman on the left says, with a voice impossibly deep.

“Although, there is time to give up if that is what you wish,” the woman in the center rasps.

“You can have your choice with this half,” the woman on the right whispers.

Zuko shakes his head and draws back and away from the women. “I don’t want to die. I can’t- is everyone else okay?”

“Perhaps,” they all say, in chorus. “You’ll need to wake up to make certain, however. You need to talk to the rest of us before you can do that.”

Hesitantly, Zuko rises to his feet. The skin over his eye feels scraped and raw again, like it always does on bad days, and the hand stretched over his spine aches in tandem. Like something is tugging on them. “And who are you?”

Eerily, although they stand in a straight line facing him, they exchange one glance. They don’t even move their heads, but somehow their eyes meet. It doesn’t even seem awkward- just inhuman.

And then, as one, they stare directly at him, and each one smiles just a little more wrongly, in unique ways.

“I am Ghāṭī,” says the woman in the almost black robes, with her smile seeming to sink into an endlessly dark chasm with jagged white teeth hanging over the precipice, “Spirit of the Valley, of what has been.”

“I am Jamīna,” croaks the woman in green, her smile widening and twisting like winding path, in the way that flesh cannot, “Spirit of the Ground, of what is now.”

“I am Parvata,” murmurs the last woman, and her teeth turn into jagged peaks, her lips turning up far further than they should, “Spirit of the Mountain, of what shall be.”

“Oh,” Zuko says.

This is new. This hasn’t ever happened before. He has never slept and woke in this halfway world with something waiting for him, clawing for him, on the edges of his brain, in the suspended tidal wave of barely veiled emotion. Never woke up face to face with three Primordial Spirits, smiling at him as if they know the way he prays to foreign gods when he gets desperate.

“W-what do you need me for?”

Ghāṭī hums, somehow, a deep and disturbing note. “Oh, nothing, little lamb. We just wanted to see what has become of the blessing we gave. We never interfere with matters of mortal things, unless the world commands it. We are too unchanging for that.”

“Indeed,” Jamīna rasps, “our fellows may make requests of us from time to time, and the world may ask for favors, but we only give blessings to those born with true iron in their blood and spines.”

Parvata stares at him. Just stares, with her eyes as bottomless pits and summitless peaks, and that too-sharp smile cutting her face into a chasm. She says nothing. She is the drop after the summit, in this moment, inevitable and finite and threatening to bring him to his doom.

And then all of their smiles drop. Their expressions turn to sheer cliff faces, unreadable and stony. 

“A word to the one that seeks to be wise,” Ghāṭī rumbles. “The world has a path laid out for you, as it does all of us. Over valleys and peaks and all in between, there is a path, and it will not be easy. The world will do all it can to ensure you remain on that path.”

“The world is cruel,” Jamīna hisses, “because it was born knowing darkness and blazes and bitterness, and it seeks to understand what makes others the same as itself. It will hurt you, to see how much pain you can take.”

“It will crush you, to see how many bones you will break,” Parvata whispers. “It will speak poisons and antidotes because it wants to know what will kill and what will save. It will destroy you, just to watch how you will come apart. You are not safe from it, no matter what you try.”

“No matter what our little niece claims as her title, she is not the Spirit of the World,” they all announce. “The world gives her commands as it does all things. As it does us. No mortal and no Spirit disobeys it.”

And then they smile again, in a way that is both sad and disturbing, and let the silence that follows their proclamation swallow them all whole. Swallow the words and leave them only in memory.

“The others want their audiences with you,” Ghāṭī finally says, as the silence stretches onward. “And I’ll hardly begrudge them of meeting with their host, child,and champion.”

“You will need to wake up soon, after all. There are things the world wants you to do.” Jamīna’s mouth curls in something that is either a further curve in the pathway of her smile or wry twist of her lip.

“When you forsake what has yet been dared to and take tradition between your claws and burn it, find our little thief,” Parvata finishes, “you’ll need each other.”

“Be careful,” they say as one. “And remember what the world wishes.”

Before he can ask for clarification- for anything, for any kind of understanding, he rises.

Up-

Rises, into a disorienting swirl of bubbles and water and- there is light, somewhere, but he doesn’t know where the surface lies. The sea presses him down, pushes him away from freedom, holds onto him as if to force him to surrender-

Teeth snag onto the back of his shirt, heavy and sharp and scraping his skin gently. The currents slow and stop, as the creature latched onto his scruff pulls him out, and up, and in, until he lands in a shivering heap on an island of ice, with the cold biting through his skin.

“I will not apologize to you,” the figure standing over him says, in a voice as light and lyrical as moonlight, “but I do regret not taking more care of your form.”

Zuko pushes heat in through his skin, even though it feels like he’s bending through sludge and not the air. He breathes out a ragged curl of flame, and the edges of it glow purple. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and risks a wary glance up, through the wet curtain of hair that drips onto his boots.

A wolf stands before him, with hair white and silver, and far too many teeth, even for a predator. When it smiles - an expression that feels wrong to see on a snout - there’s a second row of teeth behind the first, like a shark. Behind it, looming, is a slick twist of writhing darkness, like a group of eels bound together, disturbingly shiny under the infinitely bright moon and the way it reflects off of the wolf’s fur.

He knows them. He knows them, because he can feel the bright white of the wolf streaking out of his veins and the oil-slick black seeping from his pores.

“Tui,” Zuko greets, his voice as hoarse in his ears as ever, but with less of an echo than he had during his meeting with the Earth Spirits, “La. Did you save my crew?”

La moves in a disturbing squelch over the ice flow, dark liquid slipping over the ice in a nauseating motion. “There would be a time I would kill mortals for being so disrespectful to my mistress,” he says, his voice hissing out and roaring with crashing waves.

“You can find time later, love,” Tui says. Her muzzle doesn’t even twitch from its too-large smile, not even as the feminine voice echoes out of her form. There is a sharpness in her voice, however. A casual, deadly command that seeps into her tone without thought.

(Distantly, he remembers a voice, high and playing at being elegant, _ Haven’t you heard, Zuko?) _

La recedes back obligingly. He writhes in the air and mutters, “Pray to keep your luck, little sunbeam.”

Zuko doesn’t particularly like praying. He won’t say it to their faces. It just- never quite sits right with him. Like there is something he is missing. Something he cannot name, but something that makes every word he murmurs in supplication seem false. He does it anyway, because he is desperate, and the aching loneliness and deep urge to find purpose outweighs the discomfort of the action.

He nods anyway, because he has manners. Even if he wants to scream at them for- 

He doesn’t know what. There’s a foreign anger in him that he doesn’t understand yet. The wave at the edge of his mind receded but still howling with the crashing waters of indignity.

“You think so loudly, and yet with no words,” Tui says with a rush of laughter. Her voice goes distant, reminiscent. “What a wildfire child you could have been.”

“Soot,” La counters, the slick weight of his focus sliding to his wife as he seeps around to cling to Tui’s neck. “Both, neither, it hardly matters the divide he walks. He is banked embers now.”

Their attention shifts back to him sharply. His hands curl against the ice, and he pushes himself back up until he is standing before the pair. A cold snap rushes over him, but he stands resolute and strong against it, even though it bites and snaps at his scar, deadened nerves awakened in this halfway space.

“Is my crew okay?” Zuko says again. He isn’t proud that his voice cracks in the center of his words. Of the salt taste in his mouth that has nothing to do with the seawater. Of the rage that fills his skin, pointlessly.

Tui inclines her head once. “Perhaps they are, perhaps they aren’t. What does it matter?”

And something-

Something snaps, in Zuko.

The wave, poised as it is in the back of his mind, snaps, and the very tip of the crest of it falls like glass to shatter against the floor of his skull. From within its sharp, liquid depths, rage rises, a possessive rage that feels foreign, and yet somehow more familiar than he can bear.

Rage rises, like shaking ash off of scales and snapping wings into the air.

Because the crew- perhaps they are not in the place that belongs to him. They are not in the Caldera, anymore. But they are not there because they follow him, instead. They follow him silently, and guard him, and ensure that he is safe. They care for him.

What is of the Caldera may be his duty, yes. His people may be treasures he seeks to keep safe.

But his crew is more than that. His crew are fragile guardians that treat him with kindness even though he can hear the whispers at the port call him a monster. His crew have watched him spit water and grow scales and call forth winds to bring a funeral service for all of the skeletons of the Temples that wished to be set free.

His crew is hoard.

So something snaps, in Zuko, and he can see it happen as the roiling clouds over the sea shatter. 

As golden light seeps in between gray thunderheads, Zuko feels phantom weights against his spine.

“I gave you my body, upon your seas, beneath your rising moon, and you cannot promise me their safety?” Zuko hisses. He can feel the cracks spread around his eye, for one moment, the thick feeling of skin hardening and splitting. His teeth feel too heavy and too sharp for his mouth, so he bares them in a snarl.

Tui barks, once, a sound that shakes the ice shelf they stand on. “You gave us nothing more than we are owed, sunbeam,” she seethes, “Do not mistake our power for your own dues. We have given you our blessings. Take care not to squander them.”

Zuko quietly seethes. The anger feels wrong, bubbling beneath his skin, in the way it is his and yet not. 

For the past two years, he has run every errand the Spirits demanded of him. He has bowed his head meekly and climbed mountain ranges and swam through hidden coves and risked travel through pirate infested waters and militia ridden roads, for their sakes. Tui has always given him the missions, with her voice high and cold and commanding.

(Voices in a chamber edged in fire, calling for sacrifice.)

(For strategic reasons, of course.)

He has done the mortal work they are too proud to do, and his payment now is dismissal and the nauseating feeling of dark possession seeping out of his bones.

Still, he can feel that wave, poised on the edge of his mind, with only a fraction of its anger filling his soul. He shudders to think of what would occur if it all broke. The back of his neck starts to pulse with pounding pain, dragging its way up the crown of his head.

“Far too proud,” La mutters, to his wife again, ignoring Zuko. “Yet, still, he is too meek where it matters. What a monster we have helped make, hmm?”

“Better than the last of our collective errors,” Tui returns. “Better than the half of a twin that rejected the world.”

“Half of a nephew, this time,” La volleys back, “because that’s so much better.”

“My brother makes his own choices. He is the only one of us without counsel, after all. You’ll have to excuse his errors in judgement.”

“What do you mean?” Zuko asks, and the Spirits still and focus back on him again, as though they had forgotten he was there. A headache builds and builds inside his skull, almost cresting the edge of unbearable. “I don’t- what do you _ mean? _I deserve to know! What am I? Why do you call me a- a monster?”

Neither Spirit says anything. The clouds shatter even further, and golden light carves out slashes of the heavens like a knife taken to a tapestry, like the knife of pain digging its way to his temples now.

“What am I?” Zuko asks. “What did you make me into?”

La rushes forward in a motion too swift and fluid to register- one moment pressed alongside Tui, the next pressing dark tendrils against the center of Zuko’s chest.

The middle finger of the brand on his back burns with frostbite- sharp and heady and clawing. 

The headache crests and blazes. Like he is on his knees, begging, and there is shadow standing before him, with such cruel nothingness on his face. With fire in his hands.

Knowledge creeps at the edge of the agony, trying its best to dig into his brain and excavate his bones to live within his body. The edge of a taste of iron on his tongue, blood and steel. It feels like he is searching for a word, on the edge of the tongue his teeth are trying their best to saw off before he can speak it. Like he is drowning, the water filling his lungs, and his hands scrabbling for purchase against a mangled shipwreck that cuts his hands apart.

Zuko jerks back and away, feet slipping on the ice and nearly dumping him over the edge, back into the suffocating water. He barely catches himself, and his fingertips burn from the cold where they are desperately dug into the ice, bracing him. His head throbs, from his temples to the top of his neck, merging with the ache of his scar.

“I would tell you,” La says, and the waves of his voice rumble, “but the world says you aren’t ready. I do wish I could, however. I wonder- what would happen if-”

Tui gives one short, shivering howl, and La folds, down and down and back, until he is but a dark koi fish resting between Tui’s paws, silent and squirming. “The world says it is not yet time for you to learn,” Tui reiterates, “We will listen.” 

“What, is ignorance a price I must pay, then? Eternally?” Zuko whispers, as the anger boils over the pain, turns it into fuel for the fire burning within him, the fire that hasn’t stopped burning since he went mute from the smoke of his own flesh melting. “Haven’t I served you on your waters and beneath your light as faithfully as I could? Haven’t I followed your whims? Chased after every panther-eel and ghost story? Searched for a creature you can’t even find? Is my payment for my work silence?”

Tui drags her whole body back and sits, predatory. “Speak not of that which you do not understand.”

Zuko snarls back, and tastes blood as his teeth cut into his lips. “I understand nothing, because you tell me nothing. Would you rather I not speak at all? I don’t know who I am! I don’t know if anyone I care about is alive! And you stand there and say that I shouldn’t speak? That I shouldn’t try to find my-” His voice breaks off at the last word. He doesn’t know what he was about to say. He’s afraid of what it might have been. That it might have echoed with blue fire, jasmine tea, and two handprint scars.

“You have searched for us faithfully, yes,” Tui allows, “but the world says it isn’t time for you to know. We do not need to waste our time looking after your mortal retainers. We are above this. Your answers will find you when their time is right. It is not our responsibility to do more than that.”

“Then why am I searching your own waters for you?” Zuko asks. It did strike him as odd, whenever Tui would command that he chase myths of creatures in the bays that she stares down upon every day. “It was never my responsibility. I never claimed it. And if what you say is true, then your own answers will find you when the time is right.”

Tui lunges forward once, an aborted motion that ends with her snarling and looming under the kintsugi sky. “The world itself demands that you not be told. It is not in our nature to deny the world. My dau- the thing you search for is adept at using its nature to conceal itself from my sight and senses. You are different. You can find it. The world has not told us to stop searching.”

Zuko pushes forward, right under Tui’s muzzle, and stares up at her with a challenging grin as blood seeps from the cuts his own too-large teeth have made against his lip. “You lost your child, didn’t you?” he challenges. “That’s why you make me check every riverbank, every whisper of myth. You lost one of your children. It’s hiding from you. You can’t find it, and so you send me after it.” He struggles back up to his knees. “You lost a child. And so you send another after it. Perhaps your world doesn’t want you to find your-”

Before he can continue to try to tear through the reason for why he has spent two years at sea, following after ghost stories and things the moon whispered in the night, he chokes on sea water. It fills his lungs and his throat and it burns as he retches it onto the ground.

Tui stamps one paw. “I am a Primordial,” she roars. “We answer to no one, especially not _ children _ playing at intelligence. When you are told to be silent, you will be _ silent. _ You know nothing of our ways.” Her eyes are cold as ice chips. “The world demands that you not learn. We do not disobey the world.”

_ And here I thought you answered to no one, _Zuko thinks, as bitterness steals the anger away as its own sour fuel. He doesn’t like these feelings that fill him in this space. The distant pounding echoes of pain and hurt and rage pounding against his brain like a cage. He never feels this way, out of this dreamscape. He says nothing, just spits out the last mouthful of water and keeps his glare trained on the ice.

“We are done here,” Tui announces. “My brother wants to speak with you, and there is still another realm between mine and his.” 

Zuko says nothing. A messy string of water, saliva, and blood drips down his chin, as he takes in deep breaths, and he says nothing. He lets his clenched fists over his thighs and his bowed head speak all he needs to say.

Tui’s paws pad over to him, gently, and then she ever so softly licks his desecrated cheek. “We do not harm you out of hate, little sunbeam,” she says, in a motherly tone, “You just need to learn respect.”

_ (You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher-) _

Zuko says nothing.

He rises, again.

Up-

And he is falling, and yet floating, and yet rising, with tempest currents rising and falling and pressing and pulling against him, in every direction and yet no direction at all.

Panic fills him for a few seconds, before fading away as he realizes there are two hands under his arms, holding his aloft and secure as the world falls into blustering waves of chaos around him.

“You cannot be here for long,” says a breezy voice over his shoulder. “There aren’t enough of my blessed ones to give me the control over my own element anymore. Wind wants to be set free, and I can hardly blame it. I can no longer cage it, either.”

Zuko nods, and doesn’t say anything as Fēng drags him closer, hugs him to her mercurial form with the strength of a thousand gales and the gentleness of a leaf spiraling from a tree. He just curls in closer to the arm she has wrapped around his chest, and tries not to focus on the way his throat is raw from screaming and coughing up water.

“I need you to understand, little one, that I can abandon neither of you” Fēng murmurs. “Not the Avatar, and not you. Avatar Aang let his brethren die. He let my children die. But he and you alone are ensuring that I am more than just a force of nature. If I abandon him, he will abandon me, and I cannot afford that. I give him all that he asks for, because it is what I need to do to survive.”

Zuko nods again, and watches the chaotic zephyr around him fly. His hair whips across his face, long enough to twine in a tangle around his whole head, but drying it out from his unexpected dip into Tui’s personal ocean.

“The same rights I give the Avatar, I give you. You don’t pray often. I know you don’t want to. But you are loud. Even without my blessing, I would hear your prayers, and I would answer. You are half of my nest, little one, and there is no sin you could commit that would sway me from this course. I don’t know what path you walk after this, but know that I will be with you while you walk it.”

Zuko knows that this is all just so that Fēng can keep her sanity. So she doesn’t spiral apart under the force of her realm’s own chaos. That there isn’t a selfless reason for her to offer this.

But it is unconditional. He doesn’t have to prove himself to her so that she’ll support him, so that she’ll <strike> love him </strike> give him power.

So he clutches onto the arm she has wrapped around him and lets his tears fall and be ripped away into the tumble of wind around him.

Fēng presses a feather-light kiss to the crown of his skull. “You need to go before I can’t protect you any longer, little one. But I swear, I will give you all that I can. You’ll be calamitous and terrifying, and I will love you all the more for it, my little starling.”

Fēng is not always gentle. She is three aspects. One is of gentle allowance, another of fierce refusal, the last of an empty void. She is pure chaos, in the way that it is gentle and the way that it is harsh. In the way that it is patternless and yet falls into patterns so easily. In the way of storms and autumn breezes.

But here, with him in her arms, she chooses to be gentle, to hold him close, even while her element rages around her. She chooses to be soft with him, not because she has to be, not because he will break if she is harsh, but because she wants to be. She wants to give him the softness he needs to travel, and not the harshness that will bring him off course. She has an incredible violence wrapped up in her thin arms and wisp of a voice, but she has incredible peace as well.

Zuko has never known peace, truly. He is a child born and bred of a war he never had a choice to choose.

But this- this is peace. A restraining hold that tucks him close to another, that keeps him from lashing out and burning down anything he loves, while it promises at the same time that he will be strong and horrifying enough to scare off whatever seeks to harm him.

So he takes a moment to breathe in the tempest, to let himself go limp and trusting in her grasp.

And then he rises, out of her arms and her storm.

Up-

And finds himself laying down, for once, instead of flailing around in a reality he cannot understand. Hesitantly, he allows himself this moment of rest as well, this fragile piece of reality, as tears roll down his cheeks even further, to not be torn away by the swirling winds.

Then hands come to rest over his forehead, warm and burning and with a few too many joints to be human. He flinches away from them, tries to rise, but they move to press down against his shoulders with persistent weight. Their restraint is different from Fēng’s, and yet similar enough that he does not make another attempt.

The realm around him is dark. Not like the first room he happened upon, where there was nothing but darkness and yet nothing but light. It is dark here as the passages hidden behind palace tapestries were dark. If he squints - which really means, if he looks out of his left eye - he can see distant speckles of light scattered across the darkness in swathes, barely glowing enough to be noticed against the night.

The hands ease off of his shoulders slowly, and retreat fully once its clear he isn’t making another move to get up and run. It’s not like it’d help, at this point. He doesn’t even know where he is. He doesn’t know what else he has to do to escape this place.

The hands return to his forehead, smoothing the tangled hair out of his face and out behind him, slinking between the strands and brushing them through. One swipes over his left cheekbone, leaving behind a swathe of warmth and taking away the silent tears that seep out of his eye. He can’t see much more of it other that its long-fingered silhouette.

The other hesitates, and then shifts to do the same to his left-

“Please, don’t,” Zuko says, so very quietly.

Surprisingly enough, the hands listen, and pull back gently, back to splaying over his forehead and absent-mindedly petting the top of his hairline while he stares up at the abyssal sky with empty eyes.

“I’m sorry, hatchling, for all that you have suffered,” a voice echoes above, clear and solemn. “And I’m sorry that you aren’t done hurting yet.”

And Zuko closes his eyes. Because of course he isn’t done. He has never been done. When did he ever think that he could possibly _ deserve _ a break from all of the hurt and the pain, from the way that saltwater scrapes his throat and flames push out of it, the way that gravel breaks his skin and wind bites cruelly across his face.

But he takes in a breath and counts, carefully. He takes in a breath, and then another, in a steady beat, because that is all that he has.

“Is my crew alive?” Zuko asks, once more. He braces for another _ perhaps. _ For another half-answer to the question that makes his skin crawl.

“Yes. Yours and all you sought to save.” The hands card through his hair once more. “You did well, hatchling. You did not falter. You did not break.”

Zuko is glad for the darkness. It hides whatever painful expression his face twists into- literally painful, as fresh blood spills from the cuts on his lips and tugs wrongly on his scar tissue. He did it. He saved them. They’re alive.

He didn’t fail again.

“I know you want answers,” the voice says, so very calmly and so very sadly. “I cannot give you them. I can, however, tell you a story of an age long since past. Would you like to hear it?”

Zuko nods, and raises his own hands to wipe the tears out from under his own eyes.

Carefully, the hands inch below his skull and pull him up until his head is resting on something solid, pulling his hair carefully out from being trapped below his neck and allowing it to splay out behind him. The hands return back to his hair, and the voice speaks:

“Back when the world was young and us Primordials were younger still, there was chaos. There were no laws that governed men, no bending, only raw elemental force as the single barrier between mortals and all Spirits. We embodied those elements. And one day, the world decided that we weren’t enough, and so the world had us make two bridges between Spirits and men. One of light, one of darkness. Twins. They were both Spirit and not, both mortal and more, and neither all at once, as they had taken the soul of a human to watch over and guard. They held each of our blessings. For a while, the course of things ran smooth.

“And then the world told the second twin to retreat to the Spirit World alone. The world didn’t like that they were so well-balanced and split, and it decided that it wanted more chaos. It didn’t want the way of things to come easy, it wanted to make its children learn through their own suffering, and it wanted to learn through their pain. When the twins followed through with the world’s plan, one would remain as a bridge, and the other would wait on the ethereal side. If the world wanted to rebalance and allow both bridges back, it could, but it could have the chaos it wanted for the moment.

“The issue became, then, that the second twin - the one of darkness - did not want to go alone into the Spirit World and remain there. He pleaded with the world. He begged. But the world was unmoved, as were his fellows. His own sister, the twin of light, agreed that this was for the best, because she loved humanity and mortal things with a reckless passion. She was told to live in the place she loved. If their roles were reversed… well, one can only guess what might have happened.

“Here is what did happen: the twin of the light found a mortal who she loved very much, close to death, and traded him a piece of his soul for all of hers. She bonded with him irreparably. The twin of the darkness, however, refused his assigned task. He remained in the waking world. He denied the creed of the world itself. No Spirit or mortal disobeys the world, but the twin of darkness was not a Spirit nor a mortal. What he was was desperate, and rebellious.

“And so the world declared him a traitor, and demanded he die. But the world did not ask me, or my sister and her husband, or the Four Aspects, or the Spirits of the Earth to do the deed. The world asked the twin of the light. The only one who could betray the world as surely as her brother. The only one that could deny the world the same.”

Here, the voice trails off. The long-fingered hand in his hair start to move with more intent and less idle interest.

“What did she do?” Zuko asks, feeling five years old again, with his mother guiding a comb through his hair and telling him Spirit-tales. Wide-eyed innocence that was burned out of him long ago.

The voice hesitates, for a while. The fingers draw strands of his hair out and measure them carefully before weaving them together. “She killed her brother. She wrenched him free of reality and left only the impression of where he had stood. She did exactly as the world asked, and then sunk into the skin of her Chosen and hasn’t left it since.”

Zuko remains silent and lets it sink in. Lets the tired grief of the voice keep him grounded. Lets the pain of the delivery carry the horror of the words.

And then he raises a hand, lets the scales push up along his spine, and snaps his fingers.

Fire erupts, a sea of small blazes lain around him. An endless horizon, with every space filled with a single candle. Rolling hills of flame, flickering with every drawn in breath that he works so hard to keep smooth and even.

The hands, splayed through his hair, go stiff and draw back, just a fraction of an inch. They hover over his scalp, uncertain, as the candles light and the flames jump from one to the next, in a wave that extends past what Zuko can see.

It is beautiful. Beautiful, in the solemn way that a funeral can be beautiful. In the way that a bouquet of dying flowers, with petals dried and spiraling down, is beautiful. The way that the stars, in all of their distant majesty, are beautiful.

The voice sighs, then, heavy and so very tired. So sad, all at once. 

“You have so much life in you, hatchling. So much life and faith and stubbornness.” The hands return once, and make one gentle swipe through his hair to destroy whatever patterns it wove into his scalp. “I gave you life once, and you made it grow into a wildfire none could douse. I forsook my preachers for you- not because the world asked me to, but because the world did not deny me my revenge. You are of my brood, hatchling. Of my blood. You have been since you were born, and you are still.”

And Zuko braces his hands against the ground and pulls himself up, out of the warm comfort and into the still air, and turns.

It is hard to describe the Spirit across from Zuko. He has long arms that bend at strange angles in too many places, and hands that do the same, and the whole of him looks as though he was stretched tall by some great force until he threatened to snap. He looks almost human, but just so subtly wrong that everything else about him is thrown off. Patches of pale tissue spread across him, as though to silhouette him with light alone. His collarbone sticks out strangely wide, and Zuko would guess that his ribs would too, if they weren’t hidden with golden fabric. Golden streaks seep over his skin, writhing as he sits still, in bands around his arms and legs, in a collar around his neck. 

His face is just one impossibly large eye, with a bright corona of light as the iris, and a wild mess of dark hair, streaked with gold and white and every color of flame, like a lion-puma’s mane.

The thumb on Zuko’s back burns.

The eye closes, once, in a slow blink, and then stares at him, for a moment longer. “You need to wake up soon,” Agni says. “I need you to understand that I cannot tell you why you were made, or what you are, because I am a Spirit and nothing more. I can however, ask you a question.

“If the world had only one blessed twin left, and sought to make balance again, what would the world do?”

And Zuko rises.

Up-

And for a flash of a second, there is a girl across from him, pale-haired and as cold as the dark side of the moon.

For a flash of a second, there is a creature made of shadows with a collection of masks and dead souls, staring directly at him, before sinking into the ground, grinning.

For a flash of a second, he sees the moon and it is red-

Up-

And Zuko’s eyes flash open.

-

As below his deck, the Prince of his Nation awakens, Captain Jee waits out on the docks of a dismally maintained Fire Nation port in the Southern Sea and smiles across the gangway of the ship opposing him.

“Jee,” growls the waste of space across from him, surrounded by a platoon of none-too-happy soldiers.

“Hello, Lieutenant,” Jee says cheerfully, surrounded by his own honor guard. “I heard about your little run-in down South. A shame, really. How many of your crew did you lose?”

The Lieutenant across from Jee looks positively murderous. The soldiers behind him exchange looks, and, from what Jee can see, a few coin pouches. “Fourteen soldiers,” the man finally spits out. “Weak ones. Couldn’t stay aboard during an attack from a sea monster.”

Jee hums consideringly. “Again, such a tragedy. They were loyal to the Firelord’s service to the end.” He knows damn well that there are sixteen soldiers down in his mess hall wearing another ship’s armor, and the half that are awake are perfectly content to abandon Zhao and follow the Traitor Prince. He can’t help that he likes to be petty. Not only is the man across from him a liar, he’s also bad at accounting for his own men. “But I’d like you to restate the reasons for their unfortunate demise once more, and be very sure of what you’re saying.”

Baleful black eyes meet Jee’s own calm gray. “A sea monster attacked.”

Jee smiles wide and sharp. “That’s not what half of your men down at the taverns claimed. They said… Ensign Bo, what was it again?” He turns his head to make eye contact with the boy that set up the Prince’s infamous hammock.

The Ensign startles briefly, but then gains a smile sharp enough to match his Captain’s. “They claim that the Avatar did it, sir. It and some accomplices.”

Jee hums again, long and drawn out as he slowly wheels back towards his fuming opponent. “Curious. You see, Lieutenant, there’s a bit of a mismatch between your stories. And, as a general rule of thumb, I’m more likely to believe a group of twenty soldiers that all have the same story than one Lieutenant. So, I’ll give you one more chance to restate your claim.”

The Lieutenant bares his teeth once, and stays silent.

“Well, there went the easy way, Lieutenant.” Jee unpacks the scroll from under his arm, and unrolls it with finesse. “By order of Prince Iroh, Dragon of the West, Eldest Son of Azulon and Brother of the Firelord, you are to divulge all information regarding the Avatar and its companions to me, under the Law of Subordinance.”

The Lieutenant smirks. “Ah, check your books again, Jee. The Law of Subordinance requires not just a royal decree, but a sufficient gap in ranking. I’m afraid that I have to give you nothing. We’re done here.” The Lieutenant turns and makes to leave back to the safety of his own ship.

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” Jee says, and snaps the scroll closed with a sharp sound. “I’m not a Lieutenant anymore. I’m the Captain of the _ Siren.” _

This time, when Jee smiles, it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his canines are a little too on display for anyone’s comfort. The Lieutenant turns around slowly.

“So, Lieutenant Zhao, tell me everything you know. I’m afraid that’s an order.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did not mean to make this 7k of tooth-pulling exposition, but that's what the muse demanded, and I now have an overabundance of plot threads. If you couldn't tell, this was half of me wanting to whump Zuko and also just take care of the boy.
> 
> I also made a song for this, to procrastinate finishing writing it, literally last night. [Take a listen](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/190614438412/i-made-this-all-last-night-because-apparently-i), if you want. EDIT: also on the album on [Bandcamp](https://zenza.bandcamp.com/album/no-grave-hold-my-body-songs).
> 
> You can also go visit my tumblr and ask me questions about plot stuff you're confused about/want to know more about and I'll do my best to answer.
> 
> Comment, please! It keeps me sane!


	10. Chapter 10

The first thing Liu Bo notices is that she’s not quite as dead as she thought she’d be.

She’s had that thought a couple of times. It’s not exactly unusual. She had it after her first ambush. She had it after her whole cohort was killed in the seventeenth ambush, and she only survived by being too unconscious in a ditch to seem dangerous. She had it every day of her stint as a prisoner of war that got her moved off of the front lines in the first place. She had it after <strike> bashing her head into a wall </strike> getting knocked unconscious by that earthbender.

She should be dead.

That she is certain of.

But she is not. She can feel her chi struggle weakly through her body like thin wine. She can feel her breath pushing out of her lungs. She can feel the steady rhythm of her own heartbeat thrumming through her limbs, quickening as her awareness returns. She can taste the echo of saltwater on her dry tongue. She can feel the warm, stagnant air around her exposed midriff. She can feel her underclothes, stiff with salt, scraping against her collarbone.

She is not dead.

Well, that’s a relief, at least.

The second thing that Liu Bo notices is that there are two suns again.

And that one of the suns is staring at her.

She can feel the invisible heat that sparks through the air as uncaring as a wildfire and as focused as a spear. Fire leaching into the very air around her as the second sun stares. The weight of its gaze makes the bridge of her nose blaze and her eyelids flare with heat.

Her eyes snap open, and the meager chi she can spare hisses out into a thin knife’s edge of flame around her pointer finger as she scrambles back on her medbay bed, wielding it as best as she can.

The sun moves back too and sits down hard on the floor, pressed under and against the table opposing her, in a swift rushing blur of panicked motion that only gives her the vague impression of pale skin, flashes of gold, and dark fabric.

Liu Bo uses her brief respite to scan her surroundings before she needs to return to the threat at hand.

Fires spark in braziers all around the room, giving it a healthy glow that permeates up to the ceiling and into every dark corner of the place, that seep heat and life into her cold bones. Everything under her sways, letting her know that she’s still at sea, at least.

It is decidedly not a medbay- for one, it’s filled to the absolute brim with people, standing and chatting in loose circles and sitting on long tables. For another, there’s a group of soldiers lugging a heavy pot through the crowd while another group hands out bowls. 

She’s not on a medbay bed, either. It’s just one of the long mess tables, covered in- sailcloth? What self-respecting ship nowadays carries something as primitive as sailcloth? 

And as her eyes make their sweeping rounds, as her attention is ever so briefly captured by the newness of her surroundings

her wrist is gripped tightly by someone else. 

Rough hands. Fire-scarred hands. Warrior’s hands.

The scalpel’s edge of chi flares and then flickers out from her fingertips as she panics.

She’s not fond of restraining objects around her wrists these days.

Blindly, her other hand channels as much chi as it can and ignites as she darts it toward the restraint around her wrist.

<strike> (they want answers they want answers if you tell us where the troops are going this can all stop don’t you want it to stop just tell us where is the Dragon where is your fleet where where where where tell us and we’ll stop crushing your ribs don’t you want to survive this just tell us) </strike>

Another hand snaps around it- calluses and the natural grit that seems to chase earthbenders digging into her skin, forcing her flames to dry and die out, forcing her to come to terms with the fact that her body is too weak and her chi is struggling to keep her warm.

Forcing her to come to terms with the fact that there are two hands around her wrists from two different assailants, that she is outnumbered.

She can’t escape this.

So she straightens her spine, casts her eyes to the floor, and resolves to keep her silence. She didn’t betray her country the first time. She won’t do it now.

She’s back to where shackles hold her wrists and men in green and brown uniforms dig their blades and stones into her flesh to make her scream, to make her talk. More for the former than the latter, even though they’re supposed to want their information.

She’s back to where the scent of wet earth mingles with her own blood, mingles with her pain, mingles with the way they call her ‘Agni’s whore’ and every other name. Back in the place where the thick pain of rocks crushing her was better than the way they’d caress her and say they’d have their way with her, if she wasn’t old and scarred and an Ashmaker, but with a disgusting curiosity in their voices.

“-you’re fine, you’re free, you’re safe- no, don’t let go of her yet, she’s the best bender we had back on the _ Recognition, _ and she’s nasty with hand-to-hand, she’ll maim who she can- hey, Bo-bird, come on. Eyes up. Eyes on me, soldier. Come on-”

Liu Bo keeps her eyes on the ground, and doesn’t give an inch to her captors. Even if one of them speaks with a familiar voice.

“-Bo, breathe in, breathe out. Even. Do your counts. You’re fine, you’re free, you’re safe. You’re on- shi- sorry, where are we? Right. You’re on the _ Siren. _ You’re on a Fire Nation ship. You’re fine, you’re free, you’re safe. Nod to me if you understand, or blink twice, or whatever the hell you need to do to let me know you’re okay, Bo-bird. Breathe in, breathe out. Come on, let me know. You can do this. I know you can. Breathe in, breathe out, nod or blink. You’re fine, you’re free, you’re safe-”

Liu Bo closes her eyes and just focuses on her rabbiting heartbeat, on the way that it thumps through her chest like a war drum. Like someone breaking down the wall of their jail. Like someone beating their commanding officer to death with a chunk of rock.

“-let me know, then we can let go, Bo-bird. I need to know you’re lucid enough you won’t go on a rampage. I saw enough of that back in Tu Lao. Nod or blink. Come on- wait, kid, no that’s a bad idea-”

A hand presses against her forehead.

Her first impression is _ not human not right but not wrong either. _

For some bizarre reason, even though its joints press into her skin in all of the places they should, it feels like they should have more. Like they should be able to press and reach her inner flame. Like they should be able to twine around her infinitely in a cocoon of fire and warmth.

But they don’t.

They are almost too hot at the palm, and in long stripes up the fingers pressing against her skin. Everywhere else is frigid, though, and slightly water-damp. As though ice gained bones and lit them on fire.

Even though she knows that she shouldn’t move, she leans into the touch ever so slightly.

“You’re going to be alright,” a voice says, very quietly and hoarsely, suffused with smoke and saltwater. “Everyone is safe. You are safe. Open your eyes. Look at the fire. Center yourself. Nod when you trust yourself. You’re going to be alright.”

And Liu Bo- it’s not that she’s compelled. It’s not that she goes against her will.

It’s that the voice cuts through all of the messy static in her head, cuts through the scent of wet dirt, cuts through the whispers and the shackles around her wrists and everything that holds her trapped, cuts through the grave she is digging in her skull to keep her from saying something to save herself and damn her fellows.

It’s that the voice says it with such quiet certainty, such deep belief and gentle suggestion, that she wants to believe in it too.

And so she opens her eyes, and lets her focus fall away from the hands holding her wrists in place, keeping her from lashing out with whatever she has left and burning herself down to keep from being trapped.

Before her, gently cupped in one pale hand, is a little globe of flame, carefully self-contained and gently rotating around an axis she can’t identify. It sparks in ribbons of flame briefly lashing out. Like a globe of snakes tasting air, or a ball of yarn being pulled on carefully.

She breathes in.

The flame shrinks, and slinks into a pale white.

She breathes out.

The flame grows, and turns into a writhing chunk of ruby light.

In.

White

Out.

Red

In

(hands on her wrists, earthbending hands and firebending hands, both holding her carefully).

Out

(i will be alright).

In

(chi flowing from the crown of her head, where that hand presses against her skull).

Out

(chi flowing through her limbs, where her body is her own).

And Liu Bo nods.

As the hands restraining her pull away, and her awareness returns, the first thing Liu Bo notices is that she is not as dead as she felt like she was.

She can feel the pulse of her chi, the pulse of her breathing, the pulse of her steady heartbeat.

The second thing that Liu Bo notices is that there are two suns again. And the second is standing right in front of her, with damp hands that burn with heat and cold.

For once, she doesn’t feel afraid of it.

She raises her head, and stares at the sun.

Thin limbs, Fire Nation pale and sea-tanned. Black underclothes with drying salt. An Agni Kai ring clamped around the left arm. Loose black hair in a messy halo. Bright golden eyes. Red and pink scar tissue snarling one corner of a mouth, casting an eye into a permanent glare and cratered shiny flesh, reaching thin fingers of bumpy pink under a jaw and spiking up into a hairline, cracked at the edges and glowing like a lava flow. A single slit pupil that stares and stares.

The second sun nods, once.

“Uncle,” it says, very evenly, despite the roughness in its voice, “I think I might pass out again. Please try to get me above deck before I do.”

The presence on her left moves, and she gets the barest of looks at her first captor. Gray robes that fall down onto wrinkled hands and skim the floor, held up with a particularly complicated Earth Kingdom knot. Grayish white hair partially held up in a soldier’s topknot, but mostly loose around shoulders. The barest glimpse of wrinkles that speak of both an incredible capacity for joy and a habit of anger.

“Your capacity for care and your lack of self-control astonish me, Zuko,” her first captor says, as the sun sways and throws an arm over him for balance. She knows that tone of voice. A soldier’s rage covered over with good humor and smiles that can easily rip a throat out. “If I catch you climbing in the rigging, I am keeping you below deck. Stay on the ground like the rest of us poor fools, if only to keep your Uncle from worrying.”

The sun gives a gentle hum, and a slight twitch away from the closest brazier as her first captor shepherds the sun through a few loose, cautiously staring groups of soldiers, and out of the nearest doorway.

Liu Bo flexes her fingers uncertainly against the table, feeling the gentle ache of her joints and the stiffness of her scars shift with her movement.

She hasn’t had a flashback that bad since a month after the _ Recognition _ set sail and one of the newbies decided it was a bright idea to prank everyone by coating them all in mud.

“Hey there, Bo-bird,” that first, gentle, familiar voice says as it settles down by her left side, “eyes on me, soldier.”

Liu Bo tears her eyes away from watching the doorway the sun disappeared out of and snaps her head to the side to see-

Zhi. Alive.

Well, shit. Maybe she really did die, because there is no way in hell Zhi could’ve survived the water that long. It makes more sense than not. But her heart still beats in her chest, and her lungs still breathe, and her fire still works, so obviously not.

Zhi gives that crooked smile that showcases the tooth he lost somewhere in the messy snarls of desert campaigns he and his unit were dragged on. “Good to see you awake. You’re one of the last ones to wake up. Everyone made it out okay. We’re fine.”

Liu Bo wants to ask how. There’s- there’s no way everyone could survive. There have no moments in her life in which everyone survived. It’s always a rookie, always a fresh-blooded idiot, always a veteran, always a friend, that getting their veins filled up with granite and their lungs choked in dust. Always infection and disease and rations running out. Always one death for every square inch of progress. Often more. Never enough territory gained to build the pyre needed to honor the bodies it chewed up and spit out.

But she remembers praying. She remembers a wild net of faith cast as she choked on water, as the weight of her armor and sins dragged her to the sea floor.

She was a naive believer in Spirits when she was young, but her faith has been carved out of her skin, achingly slowly, leaving behind craters of scar tissue. She used to pray for clear skies and pretty ribbons and happiness. Now when she prays, it is for the souls of others. The child that she was has been taken out of her, piece by piece, and now there is only the grim matron left behind, that only speaks in funeral blessings and battle hymns.

She prayed, deep down below the waves, and she has a feeling that something responded.

Liu Bo rolls her shoulder and loosens the tightness growing in the center of her spine. “You’re one dumb asshole, getting knocked over the edge like that,” she says- or whispers, actually, because her vocal cords don’t seem up to anything more than that. “I’d say it’d take a miracle for you to have survived that, but I guess your ego was big enough that you could float.”

Zhi snorts. “Look who’s talking, birdie. I seem to recall you winding up in the same southern soup as me.” His smile fades a little, but he bolsters it with whatever humor kept him from dying out in the desert. “From what I can tell, you’re right on the miracle bit. No one’s really outright telling us what happened, but from what I can gather the ocean just spit us all right back out. Could’ve been your pride was a little too rich for the ocean, and it got sick of all of us by proxy.”

“Ah, yes. I’m sure it did. I’m too good even for a Spirit.” Liu Bo rolls her eyes and pokes Zhi in the nose. The mottled skin of her arms shines in the firelight. “Or maybe it was your stupid hat that did it, ash-ass. You’re a damn hipster, Zhi. That thing is three decades out of date and you _ know it.” _ She squints, like her Granny used to, and shakes a finger that still tremors from aftershocks and the cold in Zhi’s direction. “You younguns and your fashion statements! Back in my day, we only used helmets for running into walls! Up the volcano! Both ways!”

Zhi laughs, a genuine one, but it goes hollow halfway through. “You really did worry me, birdie,” he says. “Hurt is a hell of a thing, but I’d hate to know what would’ve happened if you managed to actually assassinate our lovely hosts. Luckily, they’re forgiving. Thank your newbie friend over here for making sure you didn’t do anything drastic.” He makes a vague gesture to her right side.

When she spins around, ignoring the protests of her joints, Rookie is poised uncertainly, half on the table and half on the bench below it. Very suddenly, she knows who restrained her a second time. He wrings his hands together- his hands that have a colony boy’s calluses and the dust that chases them no matter where they go.

“Hell of a way to thank someone for saving your life, Rookie,” Liu Bo says. “I keep you all from your immediate watery doom, and you force me through some flashbacks.”

“I…” Rookie glances around uncertainly, and then purses his lips, straightens his spine, and looks her dead in the eye. “I could say the same for you. I don’t think it would have gone over well if you assaulted the Dragon. Or his nephew.”

Liu Bo narrows her eyes, raises a finger, and opens her mouth-

And then spins to Zhi and repeats the motion-

And then faces front and slouches forward with her elbows on her thighs, holding up her chin as she drags her fingers down her cheeks.

“Hell of an introduction to the royal family, huh Bo-bird?” Zhi says. As though she didn’t wield fire with intent to harm against the Dragon of the West, or the Bandit Prince. 

Liu Bo makes a vague sound in return.

“Well,” Zhi says, slapping his thighs once and sliding off of his bench, only taking a few seconds to grip the table and keep his bad knee from taking him to the floor, “enjoy your shame. I’m going to get some soup.”

-

“Zuko, what was-”

“I don’t know. It just- it felt like the right thing. You’ve done the same thing for me before.”

“You don’t try to kill me before I do.”

“She didn’t mean to kill me. I just set her off wrong.”

“And she set you off wrong as well. I saw you under that table. You were shaking.”

“I… I got over it. She didn’t- doesn’t look like… like _ him. _ Once you took down her fire she was just- just scared. And trapped. And I helped her and- why are you looking at me like that?”

“Zuko, you don’t need to hide if you’re afraid. I can help you. You don’t need to hide from me.”

“But that’s the problem! I’m not hiding. I’m not scared! I just _ froze. _ I don’t even know if it counts as fear, because I don’t know what fear is supposed to be anymore! Whatever made me like- like _ this, _ it changed me. It numbed me. I’m not even angry right now, even though I feel like I should be- just _ furious _ at everything. It’s instinct, to be indignant.”

“Zuko, you’re still huma- you’re still yourself.”

“I don’t think that's true anymore, Uncle. I’m an- an... imitation of what I was before. I lost something. I lost a part of myself. And I want it back, but I don’t think I can get it back. Every fear I have, every bit of... anger, every piece of joy, it’s all... dull and… and dead. It’s… it’s…”

“...Zuko?”

“...”

“Stubborn child. Arguing even as you’re losing consciousness.”

“...”

“...You’re like your cousin in that.”

“...”

“I love you very much, nephew, but you must eat bricks. How you are this skinny and still so heavy is one of life’s great mysteries.”

-

Katara keeps one hand on Appa’s reins as Shen disappears into the temple.

Sokka does the same, on the other side of the massive animal. His other rests on his belt, right next to his boomerang.

In another life, perhaps, there would be bones that threatened to crunch with every shift of weight over the snow. There would be an old, dented Fire Nation helmet in the snow that they would both hide.

But in this life, the snow outside is clean and perfect. There are no bones, for they have long since found their peace in the swirling winds and steep drops. There are no helmets and Fire Nation corpses caught in the corners.

Instead, there are two children, trained by stories and war to remain still and silent and ready for the world to come to kill them, waiting for a third to find whatever distant relic compelled him back to an ancient graveyard. The ghost of ash sits heavy on the air, steeped into the snowy cobblestones and in the eerie creak of the dilapidated children’s games littered around the compound protesting the rust on their joints.

Sokka shifts his weight uncertainly, and glances over to Katara with a raised eyebrow.

Katara shakes her head softly.

They both shift their grip on the leather reins and settle their weight on their left foot.

“He’s not going to find anything,” Sokka says softly, “is he?”

Katara shakes her head again, even though she knows that her brother isn’t looking. He knows the shift of her hair beads by now, though. He can hear her motions. “Tui and La saved the Avatar. I don’t think they have the same weight up here, or the same preference toward Air Nomads.”

Sokka barks a laugh, abrupt in the solemn silence of the temple grounds. “I’m no waterbender, but even I could hear the effort he had to put in for La to listen,” he mutters. “If Tui and La saved him, it was a long time ago.”

Katara nods once. 

She may speak to the water, she may have Tui’s blessing to speak to her husband as an extension of her, but Sokka was born a child of the wolf. None of the water’s respect built into his bones, only the intuition of a howling beast and a crescent grin. He gets awkward a lot of the time, he doesn’t know how to speak to people sometimes, and his default is to bare some fangs and flare up some fur, but sometimes he just _ knows _ things. Like when there are tiger-seals to be hunted beneath the shelf, or when there’s a herd of snow leopard caribou that need to be avoided. A wolf’s uncanny ability to sniff out food and danger, waxing and waning in the moon’s phases.

“They’ve felt… angrier, right?” Katara asks, blue eyes nervously scanning the horizon as though the ocean will flow out from her irises and rise up the mountainside to kill them for any kind of disrespect. “Angry like- like the way that dad yelled at Bato after… mom. That grieving anger. The kind that makes you hurt others you shouldn’t.”

Sokka tilts his head to the side and smiles- a bitter smile that’s long-since grown comfortable on his face. “That sounds about right. The salt-in-the-wound feeling. A pebble scraping against your teeth. That sort of thing.”

Katara nods again.

“Yeah.” Sokka looks down at his feet, and then laughs with the same bitterness as his smile and unripened snowberries. “Just our luck, huh? Our patron Spirits ready to lash out, right as we come of age. I’d say it was an omen, but I think just about everything’s a sign nowadays.”

Between them, Appa snorts and lashes his tail against the ground in one heavy, powdery thump.

Sokka’s head rises, the motion making the wolf’s tail at the back of his head sway through the wind. “We need to head in. Right now.” He tosses his side of the reins over a tree branch, in the vaguest of gestures to remind the animal to not leave them all behind. He flicks the boomerang from his belt to his hand in one smooth motion that Katara has watched him fail at doing enough times that it doesn’t seem cool anymore.

“What changed your mind?” Katara says, already unlooping her hand from around Appa’s reins and pulling the strap of her water flask tight as she makes her way toward the archway.

Sokka shrugs, but his posture is lower to the ground. His feet tread just that edge more silently. “A storm maybe. Don’t know if it comes from inside or outside. Just know that we should go after… _ Shen.” _

“So you still think that’s a fake name?”

“Don’t ask me why. I just know that it is.”

“I wasn’t going to ask,” Katara says, as the snows of the outside world disappear in the stone corridors of the temple proper.

“Oh, sure, you _ definitely _ don’t question half of the things I know.”

“You are unbelievable.”

Sokka throws her a little side grin that makes his canines stand out a little too much. “Says the girl who talks to water and just signed up to train the Avatar.”

“Says the loyal idiot of a brother that signed up to bodyguard with just a boomerang.”

“I’d love to keep trading barbs with you, sister dear, but I currently feel like climbing out of my own skin.” Sokka veers off to another hallway when the passage forks. “Follow the smell of dust.”

Katara, smelling pretty much nothing but dust and ash, opts to just follow her brother anyway.

A maze of corridors later, and a giant door stands before them, partially propped open.

It sure smells a lot like dust. Somehow more than anywhere else. A deeper, harsher scent, with an undercurrent of rotting berries and wet fur.

“Ok,” Katara says, flipping the cork out of her flask and flicking her fingers in a few quick warmups and deepening her stance to shift her ankles just right, “If we die in there, it is your fault entirely.”

Sokka bares his throat very carefully to her, adjusts his grip on his boomerang, and pushes the door open.

-

From on high and deep below, in the space between world and not, in the squeeze between life and that-which-is-not-living, a thin, stretched creature made of flame, eternally watching, sits next to his sister. His sister’s fur drips with silver ichor and salt water, and her snout is stuffed full of shark teeth and infinite strength.

“So you’ve chosen to hate the boy then, rather than the light twin or the world?” Agni says, his fingers twisting in on themselves.

Tui shifts her stance defensively. “It is his fault. Raava would never disobey the world unless her host demanded it. He is the reason my Southern children have only one orphan.”

“And what if the world demanded that the light twin stay locked away? What if the world decided not to tell us, and let our children die?” Agni asks.

“It would not. It cares for us too much. It guides us, and it leads us to the best option for everyone. This tragedy is the result of Raava’s incompetence, but mostly of her host’s disobedience. You are too mistrusting of the world.”

“You put too much faith in the world, sister.”

“You put too much faith in yourself, brother.”

“Perhaps. But what if you’re wrong?”

“Then I would go insane. Then I would be insane. And that is unacceptable. The world did not demand this. It could not have demanded this.”

“The world prophesied that my hatchling would break my children into mosaics. I can feel the souls that the world demands in my throat, sister, and they are legions. Legions that will be fed into the jaws of death, at the hands of a child that deserves better than that. If this is what the world’s care looks like, I’d hate to see its anger. I will ask again: what if you are _ wrong, _ sister?”

“Then I am as cold as I have always been, and there is nothing I can do. I have too much hatred in me for it to not flow somewhere. This flood cannot be dammed, for then I am damned. Do you hate the world, brother?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps we are all meant to hate those that control us. But perhaps the reason you hate the child rather than the Spirit is because you cannot comprehend someone caring that much for their own blood. Because, obviously, it cannot be the fault of the mother for her actions. It is the fault of the child for being too pliant, or too disrespectful. Too needy. Too distant. Not enough.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“Do you hate Raava’s boy because Raava cared enough about her child to hide him from war, while you sent your own daughter out to fulfill her role as a tortured sacrifice on the waves? It sure seems like it.”

_ “How dare you!” _

“Your blood. Your union. The dark side of what you are. The blood on your altar left as an offering. Your child that dies again and again, because the world says she should and you cannot tell it no. Your child that you refused to comfort because that would make her truly your own kin, rather than your possession to play with as you see fit. Because that would make it your fault that she suffered without your love. Because it was too hard to watch her die if you allowed yourself to care.”

Tui snaps forward, jaws dripping with thick silver saliva as she bares her teeth right by the blazing mane of her brother’s hair, right in front of his unflinching eye of a head. She does not speak, because if she does, she will scream, and she will not stop. And she will not know where her rage will go, then. Better that it stays with the boy than within herself.

“Tell me, sister,” Agni says, calmly, with the tone of a man that has watched horrors and taken notes, “what of these is worse? That you cannot find her because she is finally dead, that you cannot find her because the world does not wish you to, or that you cannot find her because she has hidden from your sight and finally learned how to escape your grasp? Which of these tests your faith the most? ”

Tui lunges and passes straight through the mirage of her brother’s form. The heat nips at her, singes her fur. She wheels around with a snarl to her brother’s new projection, standing where she once did.

“For your sake, I will not help the Avatar,” Agni says. “For the sake of my hatchling, I may even come to hate him for his new deeds. But I will not blame him for my children’s crimes, for debts a hundred years stale. That is on the heads of those that committed word to deed and deed to death, because they have chosen to follow their paths. I will hate myself for every second I spend watching, but it is as I have been ordered to do. If you choose not to hate yourself, that is your business. If you choose to hate your child for you being ordered to watch it die, that is your business. But do watch where your guilt goes.”

Then her brother is gone in a cold snap that takes away his shimmering form in the air, and all that is left is for Tui to tip her head back and howl in rage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To clarify: pretty much the second Zuko woke up and wandered outside of his mini-healing room, Lui Bo woke up and sent him straight into a panic attack of his own. And then he passed out again, because his life is never easy.
> 
> In other news: fanart! and some art of my own!  
Zuko fanart from cyanide-n-cynicism: https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/190958505687/how-i-imagine-zuko-from-zenzanightwing-s-no  
Agni and Lui Bo by me: https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/190958556202/agni-and-lui-bo-from-my-fanfiction-no-grave-hold


	11. Chapter 11

Aang doesn’t turn when the doors behind him swing open again. He isn’t entirely sure where behind him even is, at this point, caught in the endlessly steep spiral of statues. It is somewhere in his past and somewhere in his future and caught in the dizzying swirl of the present.

He feels so…  _ small,  _ here.

So insignificant.

All of these lives behind him. All of these past ideals and past people that stare out through his eyes and stone eyes and the seams of the floors and the folds of their clothing. The people that he has been before.

He doesn’t feel like he has been them.

He feels so young and inexperienced. He doesn’t even know what year it is, at this point. He doesn’t know if he’s even in the same reality anymore. Nothing feels right, nothing fits, and he feels so small beneath this crushing weight of destiny. It lays before him and behind him and on him as a mantle that feels more like chains with every passing second he contemplates it.

He stands in the place he will when he is gone. The center of this long spiral, with only a few empty spaces left.

A thousand statues leading up into the shadowed ceiling of this room, and yet only room for a bare few left. He feels so old and so young, so much of this immortal mortality stamped on his soul like a brand.

There was no one in the Temple when he got here. No one in the halls. No one answering the whistles of wind he sent spiraling down the corridors. No one left behind. Just a winged lemur that stays latched onto his shoulder even now, with its little hands clamped around his robes in a vice grip.

What happened here?

Why does he stand at the end of an eternal cycle?

“Shen?” A voice calls out hesitantly.

Oh. Right. He has an assignment. He has to- has to keep going. He has a fake name and a job to do and he can’t afford to falter because he has to go North and learn waterbending and follow his destiny and hold his screams behind his teeth.

(He misses Gyatso  _ so much _ right now.)

“I’m here,” Aang responds, “Give me a moment.” He takes one more dizzying, spinning look at the statues stretching out into the entombed heavens. He sinks very carefully into an Air Nomad bow, fists pressed together and mastery arrows on full display.

The winged lemur on his shoulder scratches insistently at his neck.

And Aang-

Aang says goodbye. He leans forward, until the mastery arrow inked on his skull points toward the earth, where the wind and his people die, and gives one slow, sweeping arc of his arm. Without any input, running solely on a muscle memory he doesn’t remember learning, he repeats the motion with a stumbling riverrun of his fingers that gets more complicated as the gesture continues.

The wind hums in a thousand different tones as it whistles through gaps in the stoic clay soldiers arrayed around Aang. A thin, all-consuming, eerie sound that builds and groans and echoes until the wind and the sound is the only thing that matters.

Aang sways to a stop and stares up and up and up as the sound echoes and drowns-

And stops in one single moment. A chorus of voices silenced in one act.

And Aang doesn’t know what any of it means. He doesn’t know if it’s a sign or not, if this is something unique and unnatural or animal instinct, that makes the hair on his forearms raise at the sound. If this is what being at the mercy of a predator feels like. If this is what the mourning of gods sounds like.

But he has an assignment. He can’t afford to feel fear. He can’t afford to mourn, right now.

_ (Everyone is dead, everyone is dead, you heard Katara and she said genocide, you hear the wind and it changes by your prayers alone, you hear the emptiness of the temple and it echoes with no breaths but your own, you hear it and you can’t deny it no matter how much you wish you could, Aang-) _

He readjusts his robes and turns. Katara and Sokka hesitate by the doorway, glancing around at the statues and sidling closer together as the infinite weight of the countless stone stares cows them into submission.

“It’s just statues. My past lives, I guess,” Aang says, slinging his staff back into his hands. “If Gyatso left me something, it isn’t here anymore.”

“I’m sorry you couldn’t find it,” Katara says, and pulls her brother with her to allow Aang to slip past them and back into the temple proper before trailing after him. “Who’s your new friend?”

Aang scritches the flying lemur behind the ears and smiles, only to have it drop a few seconds later into something much more tired. He can’t force himself to be happy, right now. “He is seemingly the last living thing left up here.”

Katara’s step freezes for only a moment before she continues at the same pace. From out of the corner of his eye, Aang can see that she holds her chin at a carefully neutral angle now, and her spine has straightened into something more formal. “I’m sorry for your loss, Shen.”

Boy, that stings. Yes, he was the one that chose to use a fake name, but it still hurts a little bit that Katara is now giving condolences to a person that doesn’t actually exist. He doesn’t say anything in response.

The silence only grows more stifling as their little group makes their way back out of the temple.

Eventually, it grows too thick for Sokka, who snaps it apart with a single question: “How do you put your dead to rest?”

Well.

That’s a loaded question if Aang’s ever heard of one.

“We don’t use pyres, burials, or sinkings like the rest of the world,” Aang says, and wills himself not to cry, “first we make sure that the spirit is ready to move on. Sometimes it’s waiting for a student or a teacher to pay their respects. When the wind says they’re ready, we free the spirit from the body by way of the wind and void, and then we leave the body to return back to nature as it wills.”

Sokka hums and nods. “Sounds very poetic. But… how  _ exactly _ do you do it?”

Aang sighs a little bit, and then points off to his left, where the cliffside beckons. “You see that cliff?”

“Yes?”

“If the wind doesn’t tell us not to, we take their worldly possessions and tokens by those who knew the deceased, we put them in a pile with the body on top, and we bend it all off of the cliff. The winds by the top sweep the soul out of the body, the abyss below allows it to rest, and the body is left at the bottom for the weather and animals to take care of it.”

“Okay, neat. I think we might have to do that.”

Aang wheels around to stare at Sokka. “What?”

“Whatever weird Spirit energy you harnessed back over in the creepy statue room is making my senses go crazy,” Sokka says, and then points toward a mound of snow glistening in the perpetual sun of a South Pole summer, “and I can smell somebody’s bones in a hole over there.”

“Sokka,” Katara says, calmly bending a stream of water free of her canteen, “I think that might be the creepiest thing you have ever said.”

-

The cheers and clapping are still loud in the playhouse when Gan pushes his way out of a side door and slides back out into the night. It’s a long habit, by now, to run directly after his sets are complete. Lingering leaves room for sleazy businessmen, enterprising kidnappers, offended Fire Nation sympathizers, and the odd drunkard to work their wicked way and otherwise inconvenience Gan’s day. He leaves early for the same reason he takes his payments in advance: because the last time he wasn’t cautious, he barely got out with some burn scars on his wrists.

In the past two years, his playing has gotten a lot better, his lyrics have gotten quicker and sharper, and his knives have seen a few too many scuffles for him to not hurry away, under cover of night, back to safety.

He slips through narrow alleyways and works his way methodically in the most confusing and misleading pattern possible around the district before pulling his cloak on closer and doubling back to the teahouse he’s been using as a residence for the past few days.

There are only two people in the main room, waiting for him in the corner table with only one of the five candles burning on the shelf. Meeting time, then.

The shop owner, a sweet old woman that likes to be called Nonna, wears her nightclothes with a spring green robe thrown over the top and her gray hair loose around her shoulders. The other figure wears a thick cloak that hides all of their features, with the hood thrown over a painted theater mask of the Blue Oni, the Blue Spirit’s counterpart.

Gan sighs and shrugs his gheychak case off of his shoulders, bringing it up front to clutch it to his chest as he sits to join the table.

Nonna smiles at him with her eyes crinkling shut, and pushes a small tray full of tiles his way. “Now that we are here, the game may begin. It’s been far too long since I have played the triple variant.”

“May it bloom the quicker when planted in threes,” Gan and Blue intone simultaneously.

Nonna nods kindly and places a single ivory tile in the center of the Pai Sho board with knobbly fingers. Gan and Blue reach into their own trays and begin the first few petals.

It’s been over a year since Gan received his own ivory lotus tile. It lives in a secret compartment in his gheychak case. Even now, he can feel it pressing through the layers of reinforced leather and reminding him of its presence.

Within the space of a minute, a perfectly symmetrical lotus in bloom has formed on the board before the three of them.

Nonna sits straight, her kindly smile finally fading into cool professionalism. It’s easy, now, to see how she was once a scourge upon both the Nation. How her body count echoes in her gray eyes. “Bard, report.”

Gan drums his fingers over his gheychak case once. “There’s still no word directly from Ba Sing Se. Not a chord carries inside those walls. They’re balanced very precariously on their ignorance, and I am, as always, prepared to carry the truth when the walls soften enough.”

Nonna nods, and gestures for him to continue.

“Gaoling is holding onto neutrality by the skin of its teeth. I have another gig at their Earth Rumble coming up, so I might be able to push them over then. King Bumi sends his regards from Omashu, and told me to inform you that the bird on the western wall hasn’t moved in days and looks to be making a nest. He also said that he liked curry pastries best, but that might have been a normal statement of his. The North still wants nothing of any ballads.”

Nonna nods once more and then pulls her lotus tile out of the center of their array, using it to point at Blue. “Which one of you wears the mask tonight, hmm?”

“A humble servant of the tyrant’s den, my lady.” Blue pulls down her hood and bows her masked face slightly, the light catching on her flame-emblazoned ring and the bright blue ribbon wrapped around her topknot before she pulls her hood back up. “The Matron sends her regards, and word from the Heir’s court. The tyrant seems to be preparing for something- although for what, no one knows. He has smiled more and burned less. We of his den worry. Any unusual movements should be suspected, as far as we of the flameless throne are convinced.”

Nonna nods again, more grimly, and turns the lotus tile over in her palm consideringly before motioning for Blue to continue.

“Something has disrupted the Sages recently, more so than usual. They refuse to speak of what, but this humble servant witnessed a ritual circle of theirs go up in flames before they could even lift the chalk from the floor. Agni is restless, it seems. More importantly, their ability to predict troop movements is hobbled for the time being. I would recommend sending word to any trusted military commanders to begin covert operations as quickly as possible.”

“Useful information,” Nonna says. “I thank you for the risk you take, speaking from the jaws of the beast.” She fiddles with the lotus and swaps a few tiles around on the Pai Sho board. “I have word from the Grand Lotus and his voyage.”

Gan sits up immediately, hands itching for a brush and paper to write all of the details down. Blue’s hands creep up to grip onto the table as she leans forward slightly.

“This Bandit Prince of yours has done the impossible,” Nonna says, and flips the lotus tile in her hand to its uniquely painted opposite side. The reversed Avatar variant of Pai Sho. “He has found the dead, fought the world, and held the ocean in his soul without wavering. The Avatar walks among us once again.”

“And does the Bandit pursue?” Blue asks.

“As sure as the ice that would have killed any other crew bent to his will, yes. As sure as a dragon defends its hoard, the Bandit Prince follows. For revenge or deterrence, our Grand Lotus is not quite certain. The sea wants the quarry dead, it seems, and the quarry has leveled the wrath of the ocean against the Bandit’s men, but the quarry is but a boy.”

“A boy?” Gan asks, fingers already pressing against phantom chords while he mentally composes his next song.

“Shorter than the Prince, if the rumor is to be believed. With blue arrows and robes like fallen autumn leaves.” Nonna gives them both a significant look and then flips the reversed Avatar tile back into its lotus form. “I dare say he may carry a century of grief on his shoulders while he rides that sky bison of his.”

Gan closes his eyes and his fingers still as he lets the words wash over him. Lets that familiar grief seep through and out of his body once more. “I’ll start composing now. I can certainly spread the news at the end of my traditional sets. The Hunted, Forsaken, Avatar will sell.”

Blue nods and begins to place her pieces back onto the provided tray. “I will carry the news home with me. The stones will echo news of the Prince’s triumph.” Blue gets up, bows slightly to the both of them, and sweeps back out into the night, back to whatever ship will carry her back to the Caldera she came from, where the Matron speaks with the voice of a palace, the tyrant rules on a flameless throne, and the heir wears blue ribbons wrapped around her scarred forearms.

Gan watches her go and then sighs, setting his gheychak case on the floor and sweeping up his own tiles back onto his own tray before resting his forehead against the board and taking a moment to just breathe.

“I know you’ll want the details for your composition, Bard,” Nonna says, “and the Grand Lotus sent much along.”

“I know,” Gan mutters into the tabletop, “just… just give me a moment, okay?”

Nonna allows him that much as she places her own pieces away and sweeps the board clear of debris. Eventually, however, she sits back and sighs. “I am an old woman, Bard. I do require rest. We may discuss this tomorrow, if you wish, but it may be best to get the details fresh before they slip my brain.”

Gan sighs against the board and picks himself back up heavily, grabbing his gheychak case and sliding over to the previously occupied seat across from Nonna. It still smells like ash and spice from where Blue had leaned into the flooring and the wall behind her.

Nonna inclines her head lightly. “Well? Ask away.”

“Why…” Gan starts, and struggles to form his words, “why is it always the children fighting this war for us?”

Nonna looks at him for one moment before laughing, harshly and bitterly. “To me, Bard, you are all children. You started singing the story of the Bandit Prince before you’d even reached your twentieth year. I was born as Sozin’s Comet tore the sky apart. You are all children.” Nonna closes her eyes. “And yet, we have both only known war for as long as we have been alive. We have both known to fear black-flamed flags on the horizon. We have both known the sound of someone burning alive. We have known what it is to fear a faceless enemy.

“I am an old woman, now, Bard. My fear has been anger for a very long time, and it has worn the channels between both too deep for that river to ever change its course. I am always afraid. I am always angry. But I have seen what my anger does. What it does to me and my enemies and those I care about. I have learned to fear myself more than I fear the smoke on the horizon, and to stop letting it rule me. But you children haven’t learned to fear your anger yet. Some of you can still choose what you turn your fear into. Some of you turn it into caution,” she inclines her head to him, “but others turn it into compassion or hope. And there is something about both of those things that sees a world as broken as this one and wants to fix it.”

“They’re too young to die for the wars their ancestors started!” Gan hissed. 

“Yes, and that is the tragedy. Because they are truly good, and truly unselfish, and they die and leave behind only those that have stopped trying to fix this broken world, like me. You could say that they should fight because they have power, because they have hope, because they have new ideas and fresh minds, because the Spirits may show blessings to them that we know they have not shown to us, but there is no justification for this. There is nothing that can justify sending children off to war.

“Your Bandit Prince burned while you watched, and even now he wanders this world, cleaning up our messes and protecting the innocent that won’t fight, or can’t yet. Your Avatar is a child, and we will either watch him die and watch the world die with him, or watch him destroy the tyrant and lose whatever innocence he has left. It has been this way for a hundred years, and without the Comet that went overhead the day I clawed myself into this selfish world, it could go on for a hundred more. Because there will always be people like you and I, that fear something more than just living in a broken world, and there will always be those that die young because they wanted to fix it, leaving behind a hundred more jaded people like us to stand by and watch as the continent burns.”

Gan shakes his head. “That’s not enough. That’s not enough reason for us to just stand by and watch children bleed for our sakes.”

“Then why are you sitting in this teahouse with me, Gan Yu? Why are you not out on some distant battlefield, dying so they don’t have to? You have chosen your path, and it is valuable, but it is not one of peace of war, for you have written your songs for both. Now finish your score, spread the seeds of rebellion, show the truth, and light the beacons that may guide those children back from the battlefront. So ask your questions so you may set the word alight with hope rather than flame.”

Gan asks his questions, and gets all that he needs to make yet another story set to the mournful screech of his gheychak, and all the while he thinks of a boy that died and lived and yet fights, and a boy in the colors of autumn with a destiny on his shoulders that he cannot break.

He will call them heroes if he must call them anything, because that is what sells, and the only way people will listen to his lessons is if they hear them in the first place.

But he knows that they should be called martyrs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, that was two whole months. Don't even know why it took that long for my brain to stop being an idiot and actually let me write this again. Thanks for your patience, y'all. Quarantine got me fucked up, I guess.
> 
> Gan is back, baby!!! I missed my musical cabbage son!!!! And then I got really depressed about these child soldiers!
> 
> Comments help return the good brain juices to this hellish sack of neurons that has a residence in my skull.
> 
> Here's [my tumblr](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/) again.


	12. Chapter 12

Aang knows, the second he slips under the snow covering and into the alcove it hides. The second he sees the bleach-pale and sickly yellow bone. The second he registers the gold and orange robes, bleached by sunlight and worn from age. The second he sees the wooden necklace, with its frayed and broken tassels and triple carvings.

_ I was right. They’re all dead. Gyatso’s dead. He has been for a long time. Everyone I’ve ever known is dead. _

_ (99 AG) _

_ (After the Genocide) _

He can see it now. He can see the storm that ate him alive and forced him beneath their waves and feel the cold and the struggle and the water pressing against his chest.

He can see the clouds clearing. The sky bleeding red like it always does once a century. The wind bleeding ash for her children. The blood in the air, in these stones, in the bones of his teachers and classmates and elders.

He left. He left right before the comet was set to spread over the sky.

Right before everyone died.

And it was everyone.

Because the wind is cold and dead and no prayers ghost along the zephyr.

Because here are Gyatso’s bones.

Because he just  _ knows. _

“Shen, are- oh  _ La.” _ One of his companions says.

Aang turns, pushes past them, stumbles as far as his shaky legs allow, falls onto the cold stones, and throws up.

They’re gone.

They’re gone.

They’re gone.

They’re dead.

He closes his eyes against it, as if it will wipe the death from his vision and the pain gripping his chest in a vice grip of guilt.

They’re ivory bones under stone floors.

They’re ash forever forced onto the wind.

They’re bodies sinking into the sea floor.

Oh, Fēng, where are the bones of the rest? Did they all burn on pyres? Were they all buried in the suffocation of the earth? Tossed into the crush of the ocean?

How many bodies were desecrated? How many souls trapped and hopelessly adrift?

(Because you weren’t there, you selfish child)

(Because you wanted space)

(Because you needed to grieve for what you thought you might lose)

(Because you were small and desperate and the sky had not cast you down yet)

(Was that a sign?)

(Were those stormclouds your doing?)

(You didn’t want what lives in your skin, did you?)

(You didn’t want power)

(You only wanted a home)

(You were so afraid that you would never see Gyatso again)

(There he is, you selfish child)

(Dead on the temple stones you left because you were afraid to be torn from them)

(Dead on your conscience)

(You are still small and desperate and you crawled back out of the sea)

(Is this a sign?)

(Is this bloodshed your doing?)

(You didn’t want to leave home to train, did you?)

(You didn’t want the power the other temples would force into your skin to make you sharp with it)

(You only wanted Gyatso to keep teaching you and the wind to laugh in time with your breaths)

(Now you have neither.)

(Are you happy, child?)

If his eyes were not closed, they would glow the same bright blue that slowly creeps its way across his tattoos.

Aang sobs once, out loud.

_ (He is twelve. He is a twelve-year-old child.) _

Then, he remembers that he cannot show weakness. He just- can’t. He’s supposed to be better than that. He’s the Avatar. He has a hundred past lives that he is supposed to remember. He is supposed to know how to control this. It’s his fault if he can’t contact his past lives and learn everything he needs to know. It’s his fault. He has to be better. He has to do better.

Before, he could be ridiculous if he wanted to. He could play around under the guise of training so long as he went back with the Elders and learned how to bend the air from someone’s lungs. But that was among his sect. That was when it was safe. Because a sect was safe. A sect was your peers and your teachers and the novices. A sect was your family. Blood doesn’t matter when you learn to pray with the wind side by side and learn to hide your face side by side. The sect knew him. The sect would allow his vulnerability sparingly.

The sect is gone, though. All of the sects are gone. Two outsiders stand with him. He cannot show his failings.

He is not supposed to show weakness, so he orders his face into careful blankness and forces the guilt back into its own cage. He wipes his mouth and brushes away the tears. He rises into a crouch.

Katara hovers unsteadily a few feet away, with a piece of paper in her hands and her water pouch uncorked. She looks at him for a long while, eyes darting like a school of fish, back and forth over the relics of his momentary lapse in training.

Finally, she lets out a quiet sigh and lets her shoulders slump forward slightly. “Sokka found this note. You might want to read it.” She extends it out, and Aang takes it as quickly as he can so the shaking of his hands aren’t noticeable.

_ If you are here to destroy this place, do not. If you are here to study it, do not move these remains. If you are here to put old bones on a pyre, do not dare. If you recognize this corpse as your teacher, then you may do your rites and give him peace, however slim the chances of you being here may be. If you are his student, continue reading. If not, put this note back and do not disturb the grounds of this massacre more than you have. _

_ Hi, airbender. Or maybe you’re not an airbender, but were still raised with the traditions. Or maybe you’re dead, you’ll never read this, and your teacher’s body will stay in these ruins for the rest of time. But, if you’re alive and reading this, here are some things you should know: _

_ Firstly, your teacher fought until his last breath to try and save everyone here. He did everything he could to save his people, even if it went against your Southern creed. You should be proud of him. He’s just waiting for you, whoever you are, to say goodbye. Ghāṭī and Fēng showed me that much. _

_ Secondly, don’t go to any other temples. The North is already occupied, and the East and West have foreign patrols. There is no safety to be found in the other sects, nor are any of their original tenants left alive. I have given the rights and respects to everyone at every other temple. Your teacher is the only one who wanted to remain without a funeral. _

_ Lastly, you alone remember the old ways. I’ve traveled this world and I’ve asked the wind, and I have found no airbenders or those who practice the teachings. You may very well be the last student of the Air Nomads, if you’re still alive. I won’t say it’s your duty to keep the traditions alive, but there is no one but you and a legion of the dead who know how to pray to the wind. _

_ Now, give your teacher the rest he’s wanted for a century or more. Or, if you’re not his student, but you’re nosy and kept reading, put this note back where it belongs. _

_ -98 AG _

The note isn’t signed with a name. It’s just rust red ink in careful calligraphy, packed together in neat clusters.

But it means that some of his people found rest. It means that there is someone out there that helped. That cared. That Fēng cared for enough to show the twisting, winding paths of past winds to.

Gyatso is dead, yes. But he waited for Aang. He waited to give him closure.

Aang is the last of his sect. The last of his kind. A rare, endangered creature that floats like the autumn leaves and rages like a storm.

He can’t show weakness. But his hands shake as they grip the paper and crumple the edges. As he tucks it into his belt and allows the flying lemur to clamber up and hold onto his neck. It was jostled off his shoulder somewhere between Sokka’s words and Aang blindly running away from Gyatso, just like he did a hundred years ago before he damned him.

Aang breathes in, once, for every silenced pair of lungs that died on the land he stands on. And then he turns to Katara. “That was my teacher, Gyatso, in that cave. The one that left the note- They… They've been putting my people to rest the proper way and consulting with the Air Nomad Spirits, but Gyatso wanted to wait for me before he let go completely.”

“Do you think we have an ally, then?” Katara asks. “Since they talk to your patron Spirits and give your people funeral rites.”

Aang shrugs, letting the motion loosen his shoulders and force the tension back into its little cage, next to the grief and the guilt. “I have no idea. I’d like to say yes. But it could be a lie. All I know is that Gyatso deserves to be freed.”

Katara glances over him one more time, as though memorizing everything about him in this moment where he locks away the vulnerable, bad pieces of himself away. “Do you need help carrying him to the cliff?”

Aang could carry Gyatso before he was nothing but bones. He can definitely do it. Still, he finds himself hesitating before he shakes his head. He doesn’t know why.

Katara nods like she doesn’t believe him, then looks behind herself and makes eye contact with Sokka, who’s still waiting in the opening of Gyatso’s snowy grave. She turns back to Aang with consideration in her eyes. “Do you  _ want _ us to help you?”

And Aang, even though he is not supposed to show weakness, and he is supposed to be the singular leaf spinning through the cyclone, and he is supposed to be able to take care of himself-

Aang nods.

“Alright,” Katara says, and holds her hand out. “We’ll do this together. You don’t have to be alone for this.”

Aang takes her hand, and lets the gentle coating of salt brine and the unnatural chill of a waterbender’s fingers lift him back to his feet.

And for some reason, it doesn’t feel like a sign of weakness to do so.

-

There’s a strange ceremony to Shen’s movements. He arranges the bones with an artist’s eye, packing snow and dead leaves below with deliberate care. It’s odd and birdlike, in the methodical way he builds a nest for a corpse and carefully stacks the bones into an orderly arrangement.

It’s fascinating, in the way a lot of morbid things are. Like watching a flock of albatross-sharks descend on a tiger seal and strip the whole living creature in seconds of its life and flesh. Flaying the temporary from a creature and leaving behind the beauty of bare bones.

When he rises, finally, and steps away from the cliff’s edge, the bones have been stacked in a neat monolith, yellow undertones sharpening in contrast with the white snow and the black leaves placed in three strong spirals, echoing outward. Each spiral looks exactly like the one on Gyatso’s necklace.

Three aspects of one full god.

Shen raises his palms to the sky, closes his eyes, and prays.

She can’t read it like she does waterbending. It’s not the same level of physicality. If hard pressed, she might understand a few earthbending phrases, but firebending and airbending are both beyond her comprehension.

She can’t read it, but she feels it, deep in her bones. She feels the way the wind rushes and crashes and howls and mourns. She feels the way the stones tremble with the force of it. She tastes the grief in her marrow, and the aching pain on her tongue.

The whole structure that Shen arranged trembles, shifts, and goes flying off the edge of the cliff and into the steep drop waiting below.

Katara can’t tear her eyes from the spectacle of watching what once was a life disappearing into the thick fog, but she can feel Shen’s tears in the back of her mind. Feel the way they sing their sorrow into the sky without him even registering their slow path down his face.

“You can grieve,” Katara says, not looking away from the drop and the mists that swirl below. “You always need to grieve sometime. Always. What is taken and given should be mourned and celebrated equally. Push and Pull.”

“If I start,” Shen whispers, but it is loud in the silence of his old home, “I don’t know when I’ll stop.” He pauses, for a long while, then says, “They died because of me. Because I wasn’t there. They wanted me to leave the temple. I didn’t want to leave Gyatso. So I went out on a midnight flight to clear my head and work out how to fix it. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in the South Pole, and  _ everyone is dead because of me.” _

Katara straightens her spine, and finally looks away from the drop to exchange a glance with Sokka.

_ Can I tell him? _ She asks with a quirk of her eyebrow.

_ Are you sure you want to? _ Sokka responds with a shift of his shoulder and a slight purse of his lips.

_ I think he needs to hear it, _ Katara says with a slight tilt of her head.

Sokka sighs, which is an affirmation all on its own, but inclines his own head and raises one eyebrow to say,  _ It’s your story to tell. _

Katara nods and does a slight sweep of her head to say,  _ thank you, but you should start us off. _

Nothing like long blizzards and a lack of parental supervision to make your own nonverbal language with your brother.

Sokka sighs again, turns to look back at the drop into the feather-white abyss below, and begins. “When I was young, I knew my sister was special. Everyone told me that. Everyone was happy when she made the water jump and froze snowmelt. But they were afraid, too. She was special because she was the last of her kind. She was the last Southern waterbender. Everyone else was carted off or killed long ago by Fire Nation soldiers. She was the hope of the village, but she was dangerous, too. She was a sign that the Fire Nation wasn’t done with our village yet.”

Katara picks up where he dropped off. “When I was eight, the snow turned black, and my mother took me to hide while the raiders came in their metal ships and masks. She hid me behind the wardrobe in our home, and she knelt on the floor, and she waited. When the raider came in and said they had heard of the last Southern waterbender, my mother said that it was her, and she offered her wrists up for the man to bind-”

When Katara chokes on her words, Sokka fills back in. “He killed her. He killed my mother right in front of my sister, and he laughed. He left with everyone else, and he destroyed us. Dad left, after that, to join the war effort. We were left behind to manage a village and keep ourselves alive. But I’m blessed with the soul of a wolf, and waterbenders scent blood in the water better than anything. We were always meant to fight.”

“I watched her blood burn the snow into steam,” Katara whispers. “And I didn’t bend for three years. Because for those three years, I didn’t mourn. I was just numb. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to think about her. It took the ocean going silent for me to finally start saying goodbye to her and start bending again. Your people died, and you weren’t there to protect them, but you might have just died among them anyway. My mother died in my place. A life for a life. You are alive now, to carry on a legacy only you remember. I am alive now, to carry on a legacy I never had the chance to learn. We both have to mourn to make sure we step forward with our burdens.”

Shen takes a shaky inhale. “Not yet. I can’t do it yet. Not when I have a mission. I can’t afford weakness.”

“Someday, you’ll be able to,” Sokka offers, “and it will suck so badly at the time that you’ll think you never want to let yourself be that vulnerable ever again. But you’ll feel better afterwards. You’ll be better afterwards.”

“Not yet,” Shen repeats. “Not yet.”

“And that’s fine,” Sokka says, tucking one hand into his parka pocket. “We’ll be here when you’re ready. My sister swore an oath to take you North and help you learn, but I’ll be damned if we let you die after that. Come Koh or high water, we’ll keep you safe. You act like a little old man, sometimes, but you’re at least a year or two younger than me. You’ve now acquired a big brother who will beat the living hell out of anyone who bothers you.”

“Or who’ll trip, fall on his face, and hit himself on the head with his own boomerang twice,” Katara adds dryly.

“I was six, Katara! What kind of five year old pipsqueak remembers something like that!”

“Evidently, this five year old pipsqueak. With the magic water powers. So if you call me pipsqueak one more time, I will put ice water in unfortunate places.”

Shen laughs. It’s bright and high and happy, and even he looks surprised that he did it. He claps his hands over his mouth and blinks wide eyes at the both of them. He laughs again, slightly rougher, and scrubs the heel of his palm over his eye. “I think Gyatso would’ve wanted laughter at his funeral,” he admits sheepishly.

“Then it’s a good thing you got to give him some,” Sokka says. “You were really close with him. Was he your dad?”

Shen shuffles his feet a little bit. “We- uh, we don’t- didn’t really have family in the Nomads. Not biologically, anyway. I mean, people gave birth to us and helped raise us, sure, but there was a lot of adoption too. And when we were old enough to make a somewhat informed decision, we’d pick one of the four sects to study with. It’s like- like a family based on choice and learning with everyone else.”

“Family based on choice and learning, huh,” Katara muses, “well, sounds like we’ve got our own little sect going. You chose to travel with us. I’m choosing to teach you. Sokka is doing whatever Sokka does, but he’s sure as Agni choosing to do it with the both of us. I’m pretty sure we’ll all teach each other something while we go. Sure sounds like one of your families, Shen.”

Shen laughs and scrubs over his eyes again. He stands up a little straighter and shakes out his arms, like it will get rid of the guilt and grief and pain that seems to haunt him no matter how hard he laughs. “Well,” he says, “if we’re family, then you can call me Aang.”

“Ha! Fake name!” Sokka crows. “Called it!”

“Yes, yes, you’re very smart,” Katara says as she pats his head mock condescendingly. After turning that gesture into a combination chokehold and noogie, she turns back to Aang. “Nice to meet you, Aang. Now, if we’re going to get down from here before it gets dark, we should start now. Are you bringing your little flying friend with you?”

Aang raises one hand, to the top of his head, where the flying lemur has spread itself over his skull like a sentient wig. “I don’t think that’s really up to me, at this point.”

“Probably not,” Katara admits, and drags her brother on by the neck to where they left Appa half-heartedly pseudo-tied to a tree. “And we’ll want to hurry to drag all of the Fire Nation ships we can away from the village.” She glances down at her brother. “Where are we going again?”

“K-o’i i-and”

“Oh, right, Kyoshi Island,” Katara says, releasing his neck to climb onto Appa’s back. “Thanks, Sokka. Have some air back.”

“You are the world’s worst little sister,” he calls after her, arms crossed petulantly. “I hate you so much you horrible little magic gremlin.”

“I hate you too, and I don’t know who trusted a dumb little weasel like you with knives.”

Aang blinks. “Is this how siblings are supposed to work?”

Sokka shrugs and scoots up Appa’s saddle. “It’s how we work. You’ll get used to it. Probably.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's your friendly neighborhood reminder: Aang sucks at narrating for himself and has a tendency to self-blame a lot. This little kid has too much responsibility put on him and survivor's guilt to accurately gauge what is supposed to be normal. He is not responsible for the death of his people, but he sure as hell feels like he is.
> 
> This updated a lot quicker than I thought it would. Comments/speculations/memes/whatever help me shake off the old Monday Blues and actually knuckle down on writing something.
> 
> I made a [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mBd9AQgaAWKyUeaSZGUr6?si=W_oNo3VSSKadMqVD58nR7A) of songs that have titles/lyrics that fit with the story, or otherwise just sound like it to me, if you want to check it out. Here's my [tumblr](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/) again, too.


	13. Chapter 13

“What did you learn from the Lieutenant, Captain?”

Jee doesn’t jump, flinch, or outwardly react to the sudden voice over his shoulder, but it is between him and Agni that his heart goes double-time for a couple of seconds. It’s a hazard that comes with journaling - sorry, keeping the records - on the deck. He continues writing in the ledger and doesn’t look behind him. “He doesn’t care enough for his crew to notice that we have his supposed casualties on board. A couple of them are colony benders. The Avatar has airbending tattoos, is a boy approximately twelve years old or so, and has two Water Tribe companions and a - as far as I can guess - sky bison with him. One Tribesman bends water, the other uses weaponry and doesn’t bend. The Avatar went into Avatar State after his sky bison was injured by the troops.”

An interested hum comes from behind- and above Captain Jee. “He has a Spirit Guide already, then.”

“Sure sounds like it,” Jee says, and finishes writing down the last character on his records. He takes his sweet time rolling the scroll up properly. “I’d suggest going to the Southern Air Temple to pursue, but I doubt he’s still there. Do you think he was the student that Nomad was waiting for?”

“It’s likely.”

“Well, there’s one bit of good news.” Finally, Jee slides the scroll into its casing on his belt and turns to look up. “Do you know where we’re- _ Agni, _kid.”

Zuko is perilously hanging upside down by virtue of one rope hooked over his right foot and another that he’s resting an elbow on. The sash that usually covers his scarred side is looped around his neck. The scale patterns extend oddly far out from the scar - halfway down the neck - and his Agni Kai ring has a few glowing geometric patterns extending out, too.

“You should probably get down from there before your Uncle sees you, my prince,” Jee suggests. “You did host two Primordials. You probably shouldn’t be climbing everywhere.”

Zuko shrugs and uses his free hand to brush a stuck strand of hair off of his cheek and into the waterfall of black hair extending from his upside-down head. “There’s less people up here. I can’t deal with everyone, right now.” He shows the scales creeping up his arm as proof.

“All due respect, my prince, but having you up there right now is giving me hives. You have a room you can use if you want to be alone. If you want to be around the crew but you’re worried about the scales, I’m sure you can cover them. It’s nothing the original crew hasn’t seen, anyway.”

Zuko nods, and then curls his body up until he can grab onto the rope hooked around his foot and pull himself up to sit on it. “I’ll see about it later. I just need to be higher up right now. It’s better up here. I feel right, up here.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” Jee leaves navigating the ropes to the young and the intelligently idiotic, like Ensign Bo. “Any inputs on where to go next?”

“North, mostly. Zhao is going to follow us for a while, at least, and we don’t want him going back to that Southern Village to try to extract revenge. They’re innocent. We can lose Zhao by Kyoshi Island and continue our hunt.”

Jee nods once, and then taps his scroll case with his fingers in a nonsense pattern. “If it’s not too forward of me to ask, what are you planning on doing when you find the Avatar?”

Zuko sighs, and slumps forward slightly, hooking his knee around the rope and holding onto another to curl up against it, upside-down. “The Spirits want revenge. Not death, I don’t think, but suffering. They want him to feel hunted. To feel trapped. To feel helpless. Petty vengeance for leaving them alone with the broken world they sat by and watched break itself.”

Jee stops tapping on his scroll case. “That’s all well and good,” he says, “but what about _ you, _ Prince Zuko?”

Zuko considers this for a very long time. Long enough that Jee is tempted to ask if he fell asleep with his eyes open. But then he says, very quietly, “I wanted to help him. To help him end this war. I wanted to stand by him and help him learn the elements and take back the Caldera. To bring the Avatar in all of his power to my father and fulfill my half of the bargain. To be allowed home and to end the bloodshed.”

Jee sighs, soft and nonconfrontational. “I can’t help but notice that’s in the past tense, my prince.”

Zuko closes his eyes and takes in a deep, slightly ragged inhale. When his eyes open, the scales blaze against his skin slightly brighter, and the lamplight-yellow of his left iris glows just as strong. “He hurt my crew. He didn’t hesitate. He raised the ocean and he meant to kill and the only reason you all are alive is because I am an impossibility. We hadn’t hurt him, and he tried to annihilate us. He attacked us, unprovoked, and you all could have died because of it.” The shadows on his face change slightly, growing harsher and longer, more predatory. “I think I can bring myself to agree with the Spirits, now.”

The prince is terrifying. Bone-shakingly so. Because he is quiet and waits in the shadows. Because he doesn’t seem to feel at all until the scales burn against his skin and against the sky and seem like they could carve this world into ash.

Because he is kind, mostly, and that means his fury could eat the stars.

Jee smiles, soft and proud. “Then we’ll hunt with you for as long as you’ll let us.”

-

Kyoshi Island is beautiful from the air. Mountains reaching up into the sky, encircling the circular bay like an honor guard. The gradient between the crystal clear water by the beach to the deep blue-gray of the ocean.

From the ground, it’s significantly more terrifying.

The allure of the clear water by their feet gives way very easily to the churning waves, fear of the unknown, and the deep blue expanse that seems like it should start eating into the horizon any second. The mountains seem less like guardians and more like wardens looming over the group.

Also, the fauna is horrifying.

“Did that sea serpent just eat that giant fish?” Sokka asks, eyes wide and worried. He looks very glad to be standing with his sister by the edge of the surf instead of any closer to the abyssal waters.

“Yep,” Katara says.

“I could ride on one of those fish, though!” Sokka yelps.

“Yep,” Katara says.

“You are not immune to being eaten by horrifying monsters,” Aang offers from his upside-down position wrapped around one of Appa’s horns, mirroring his new flying lemur friend.

“I know that, I just thought that something five times my size might get better treatment!” Sokka still stares at the patch of slightly bloodied water that had, up until recently, held an elephant koi. “Tui, why do these people worry about the Fire Nation if they’ve got a couple of those things in the water!”

Katara hums and practices some more adjectives on the tide. “I’m pretty sure they don’t have to worry about the Fire Nation _ because _they have them in their waters. Firebenders approach by sea, right? Well, I wouldn’t want to attack a little place like this and risk losing half a fleet to something like that. Too much of a risk for too little benefit.”

“Push and Pull,” both siblings say simultaneously.

Aang nods and swings off of his perch to stand by Sokka and watch the waves. The lemur follows and clings onto Aang’s arm. “I think there’s only one of the monsters, actually. It’s Avatar Kyoshi’s old Spirit Guide, I’m pretty sure.” He scratches his arm a little and screws up half his face in concentration. “I can’t remember its name right now. I was concentrating more on bending instead of history when the Elders were teaching, to be honest.”

Sokka nods and scans the horizon for any more ripples that herald the monster coming to grab another snack. “It makes sense, I guess. Kyoshi’s neutral, right? But they’re also in a strategic position up against the Earth Kingdom. That’s why they can’t join in the fight, but why dad never bad-mouthed them for not taking up arms. Because once they do, they’re too much of a valid threat and good drop point to not attack, whether or not they have a demon straight from every sailor’s nightmares in their bay.”

Katara sighs and tries to convince her water column to rise up level with her waist without using any chi. “Sokka, why are you so good at battle tactics and so bad at giving any thought to anything else?”

“On all levels except physical,” Sokka says, bearing his sharp canines in a half-grin, half-threat, “I am a wolf.”

“No,” Katara says, breaking her stance and interrupting her persuasion of the water to smack the back of his head lightly, “Absolutely not. Shut up. You can’t keep using that as an excuse for being combat-ready but dumb. You’re Spirit-blessed, not idiot-bles-”

The sea monster surfaces again to grab another massive fish.

“Oh, ok, that’s- oh wow, I hate that,” Katara interrupts herself. “I hate that so much. Can we leave? I think we should leave.”

Aang shakes his head, but also can’t tear his eyes away from the bloodstain on the water. “You guys said that the Fire Nation patrols around here. They aren’t out right now, but we need them to see us before we can leave.”

And that’s about when things go wrong.

The flying lemur shrieks and leaps to perch back on Appa, eyes wide and ears flattened as he trembles against the unbothered sky bison. The noise handily covers the sound of booted feet sprinting against the sand.

And a small armada of golden fans with sharp silver edges are very suddenly brandished against their throats. The collection of black-gloved hands that hold them do not tremble in the slightest as they level their weapons at their new captives.

“Fire Nation spies, huh?” A voice says from behind them, dripping with contempt. “You shouldn’t have come here.”

Sokka tilts his head up to get a little more distance from a particularly close fan and raises his hand away from his hunting knife and boomerang. “Not Fire Nation spies, actually. Thanks for asking. But you might be right on your second point, given the-” he makes a tiny noise and stiffens up further as the bladed fans get closer to his throat- “giant sea monster and _ very sharp weaponry. _ How do you people even fish here, with something like that in the water and your fish that big?”

“We’re vegetarian,” the voice deadpans.

“Really?” Aang says, brightening a little bit despite the weapons being very close to some of his arteries.

“No. Now cooperate, or you’ll be bait for the Unagi.”

“Great work, team,” Katara mutters, but obediently folds her hands behind her back to be tied. “Second day together, and we’ve already been kidnapped. I’m going to blame you, Sokka.”

Sokka sighs and follows suit. “I’m definitely not at fault here, but that’s fair.”

Aang lets out a sigh of his own and lets his arms get bound. “At least we know the name of the sea serpent, now.”

The Unagi takes this moment to take down yet another fish in terrifying fashion.

“Yeah, okay, I’m ready to go now.” Sokka says, head tilted to carry his word behind him. “Take us to your leader. Unless your leader is the Unagi, in which case, take us to literally anyone but your leader. Who’s in charge right now, actually?”

The voice laughs, but cuts off abruptly as though it didn’t actually want to find that as funny as it did. Strong footsteps pad along the sand to pass them by. The fan wielders close their weapons with a snap and push on their prisoner’s shoulders, forcing them to kneel on the ground.

A girl in a green kimono and carefully applied white and red war paint crosses in front of them and wheels to face the group. Gold glints off of each of her accessories, including the two deadly fans strapped to her waist. Her spine is straight and her chin is held high. She looks like a queen and a general. Like grace and violence. Like beauty and war in one being.

“You’re talking to her right now, spy.” Her red painted lips twitch a little bit as she stares over him. Then she raises a hand and brings it down in a casual hand signal. “Lead the beast back to the village. Bag the captives for trial.”

The bags are pulled over their heads and they’re wrestled to their feet to blindly stumble away from the waterfront with strong hands clamped on their forearms and the even marching steps of their captors. 

Sokka blindly leans over to where he approximates Katara is and, with the bag muffling his words, whispers, “Was that supposed to be as attractive as it was? It was, right? It isn’t just me?”

“Spirits, Sokka!” Katara yells, “Shut up!”

-

“Captain has us heading out of port before the hour is up, Cook. Are you sloshed enough to go back now, or are we going to make him send out a search party?”

Cook sends a death glare to the unfortunate crew member that hunted him down in the tavern. “I swear, he couldn’t wait a few more hours? Until I’m drunk enough have to deal with idiots like you mucking up my mess hall? Bad enough that the Pr-” oh, wait, there are other people in this bar, hold on- “the little wyrm put icemelt all over my floors, but now I have to cook for even more people!”

The crew member shakes his head. “If we stay at port any longer, I’m pretty sure Lieutenant Zhao is going to challenge the Captain to an Agni Kai.”

Cook snorts into his cup. “Fat chance of Zhao winning that one. The Captain’s been following the little wyrm’s lead on bending for a while now. I don’t even know if he moves anymore while he does it.” He glances up at the crew member. “Well, are you joining me or not? Get a drink and start complaining. It’s tradition.”

The crew member sighs and slides into the stool next to Cook, pouring himself a cup of sake from Cook’s own bottle. “One of the new acquisitions has the same name as me. Do you know how hard it is to try and keep the name Ensign Bo when you’re up against someone sixty battles and thirty years your senior? And I haven’t even done anything cool enough to even get a nice nickname! I’ll go down in history as something dumb!” He tosses back the sake like someone that has seen someone do it before and really thought he could pull it off on his first try. Given the way his face contracts after he swallows, he’s likely only ever had the watered-down alcohol the crew share around on celebration days and amidst storms.

Cook smacks his back once and steals back his sake, pouring another cup for himself so the little alcohol thief doesn’t get any ideas. “You’re paying for the bottle, kid. And you say that like history is going to give a shit about you.” Cook takes a few slow sips of his own drink. “I’ve seen too many glory-chasers sink to the sea floor without anything but their deployment records to their name to believe that you’re going to make a dent on history.”

Bo slaps down a few coins onto the bar to pay for the bottle and starts tracing morose circles on the countertop. “Listen, a kid can dream. Three years ago I was fresh out of the academy, knew about four kinds of knots, and had aspirations to get put on a nice Earth Kingdom patrol ship before I retired to die alone in my shitty hometown, with my shitty relatives. Now I’m the chief rigger on our ship, Captain just promoted me to Ensign, and we’re chasing after a thing from legends. Things could go really wrong, yeah, but I never thought I’d get to be here. I was pretty sure I’d be a Petty Officer at _ best. _ I have no idea what I’m doing. I have no idea where we’re going. But we’ve gone this far, and I’m not planning on stopping yet.”

“You’ll go face first into a wall with that kind of attitude, kid.” Cook swipes the money and shoves it in his pocket. “You’ll run headlong into trouble and you won’t stop sprinting until you’ve killed your own damn self.”

“What a way to go, right?” Bo says, head tilted back to stare up at the flickering shadows on the ceiling. “The other Ensign Bo ran into a wall, too. A literal one. I think it was to cover up her killing her commanding officer. You know, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t mind getting a shitty nickname, if the only other option was to physically fight her for it. I think she could kill me without even trying. Agni, she’s terrifying. It’s like my grandma all over again, but we’re coworkers.”

Cook sighs. “Agni’s fire, kid. You’re a lightweight.”

Bo has the grace to look miserable. “I mean, you’re not wrong, but I’m also just like this normally. I’m alone up on the ropes most of the day. I talk a lot to myself. I also just listen to everybody. There are so many affairs happening on board. _ So many. _ Why? What’s the point! Stop talking dirty on duty! I am right there! It’s disgusting! Be ashamed of yourself!”

By the end of his rant, Bo seems to have found a spectral crew member to rant at that coincides very nicely with a potted plant.

Cook whistles lowly. “Damn. I _ wish _ I had your alcohol tolerance. I’d spend a lot less money at the tavern, that’s for sure. You okay, there?”

“No, probably not. I’m still freaked out by our encounter with the- you know. That thing. That almost killed everyone.” Bo thunks his forehead onto the bartop a couple of times. “We’re gonna die, right? The- the you-know-what is going to kill us, right? I’m not the only one who thinks that?”

“And here I thought you were so set on making a mark on history.”

“Yeah, well, given that whole ‘glowy-eyes, giant wave, oh god we’re going to die’ experience, I’m pretty sure history is going to make a _ lot _ more marks on me. But hey, not everyone gets killed by the- the you-know-what. Unless everyone is. In which case, history doesn’t matter anyway and life is meaningless!” He thunks his head a few more times. “We’re all going to die! All of us! The world hates us and wants to see us suffer!”

Cook pours himself another cup of sake. “I take back what I said about wanting your alcohol tolerance. I also take back wanting you to drink with me.”

Bo just leaves his forehead against the bartop. “That’s fair. Rude, but fair.”

In the corner, someone starts bowing against an erhu. Cook wrinkles his nose and finishes his bottle, before standing up and pulling Bo with him.

“Where are we going, now?” Bo asks, straightening his armor a little bit.

“Back to the ship. I hate music, and I am not staying in here for a second longer if I have to listen to one of those things.” Cook is one of those crew members that no one ever invites to music night once he’s said no the first time. Something about the way he controls what portions you get and whether or not it’s lightly poisoned tends to dissuade people from bothering him. He’s heard one too many battle marches and badly-made serenades to ever care much for music.

Bo tilts one ear to hear the song. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard this one before,” He mutters.

“Then you can hear it another day. If you think I’m going to leave a kid like you alone in a bar, half-drunk off of one cup of sake, then you’re wrong. Come on.” Cook drags Bo out by the arm and they meander back to the ship.

(An interesting thing to note: the song they very narrowly missed hearing was very popular in some circles, and highly maligned in others. It’s a very catchy song. It also happens to be something of a revolutionary song, in nature.

And somehow, by the same coincidences that rule most of life, the subtle nudging of the world, and the unconscious persuasion of a little Prince, so afraid of the world and of being helpless, not one of the _ Siren’s _ crew has ever heard so much as a full verse of the song.

It’s a very catchy song. Gentle and harsh, starting from the falling autumn leaves and ending with the snuffing out of flames. Strong and steady, as the sun’s unrelenting rays and the stability of the earth. Visceral and real, like dirt beneath fingernails and ice against skin. Smooth and flowing, like fabric billowed by the wind and a clear mountain stream.

Played by an older bard with nothing much left to lose, the opening bars of The Month Of The Falling Sun echo out into the streets and through the tavern of Fire Nation soldiers, cold and miserable and waiting to be shipped off to their patrols and the frontlines and their dooms. To soldiers waiting to die. To soldiers fearing what their loyalty to a cold throne might bring them.

It’s a very catchy song.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on a slight writing binge, so here's another chapter. Don't know what's happening with it, but it sure exists.
> 
> Your comments are keeping me going, everybody! Thank you so much for your support and affirmations.


	14. Chapter 14

“Yeah, Zhao’s following us for sure,” Bo calls down from the highest mast, perched partially on his own rigging.

Jee sighs. “That man understands nothing about subtlety.” He shakes his head and then does a double take back to Bo. “Ensign, Cook already told me you were half-drunk. Get down from up there. _ Safely.” _

Bo pouts but swings around to the ladder instead of trying out his impression of the Prince’s more batlike tendencies. He hasn’t had a major fall in the almost three years he’s been serving on the _ Siren, _ and he has taken that as a sign that he can be as reckless as the Prince when it comes to scaling the ship’s complicated veins of rigging. Just because he hasn’t been proven wrong doesn’t mean he won’t, even if coincidence seems to be law on the Prince’s vessel.

Jee takes a quick moment to take in the horizon and the slowly descending sun. The sky is starting to bleed lightly at the edges, like it did the first night the Prince bent the world to a standstill and breathed with the dying sun like it was gospel. Like it did the dusk when the scared child that was the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation finally gave way to the strange creature that haunts the mizzenmast. Jee was the first one on deck when the clouds burnt alive and the Prince-who-burnt-alive moved as though he was a wildfire. He hasn’t forgotten what it felt like to feel the second sun rise as Agni set.

“I should probably thank you for the promotion,” Bo says, skipping three rungs at a time and pulling Jee out of his thoughts. “I know it was probably just a power move against Zhao, but it’s still nice.”

Jee pauses. “What promotion?” If he’s being honest with himself, he hasn’t actually checked on the ranks of anyone on the ship for the past year or so. They’re more just fun nicknames everyone calls each other, and can occasionally lord over each other to get out of cleaning duty. Having royalty on board, especially royalty that doesn’t care overly much for titles and more for the quality of their men, already works enough wonders to make a man forget rank, even without the additional strangeness the Prince brings to everything. “Haven’t you always been an Ensign?”

“No,” Bo says with a little laugh as he hops the last few feet to the deck. “I was a fresh recruit when I was brought on. It’s not like it matters much. I just know that I’m in competition with one of our new acquisitions to keep my name because you promoted me.”

Jee frowns. “But you’ve been in charge of the rigging since day one. You’ve kept us alive through more storms than I care to count.” He lowers his head into his palm. “I had a recruit doing the job of someone a half dozen or so ranks higher. I’m an idiot. What was I thinking?”

“I have no idea, sir, and I never really planned on asking,” Bo chirps. “On the bright side, I can now make someone else do dish duty. All is forgiven. If it wasn’t, I’d use up my pass to cuss you out.”

Jee sighs again and claps him on the shoulder. “Well, you certainly deserve it. But, for not telling me about any of this before I promoted you, I am assigning you to gather the crew together on deck. Including the new recruits.”

Bo wrinkles his nose but bows his head easily. “Are we getting a lecture? Because if you’re about to lecture everyone, I will have to drag some of the older soldiers up here kicking and screaming.”

The sky is marbled with clouds, and the fire of the setting sun will set the sky alight all over again. It’s going to look beautiful.

“Not yet, Ensign,” Jee says, clasping his hands behind his back. “We have some new members to bring into the fold and some pursuers to unnerve. I’ve had quite a few reports and personal experiences as to the intimidation factor and morale rallying of music night.”

Bo sucks in a breath through his teeth. “Hell of a way to induct the newbies, sir. I’ll get everyone I can up here, but if you make me drag Cook through this, me fainting from hunger forty feet in the air will be your fault when he takes it out on me.”

“Valid point, Ensign. He’s exempt, but only if you play at least one song and join in for at least one of the rounds.” Bo has a fairly good singing voice, if a little squeaky on some points, but he’s mostly good for his showmanship and the fact that he’s one of the younger people on the _ Siren. _ Nothing better than being shown-up by a zygote of a crewman to get the older folks to participate. He’s a damn good dancer, too, even if he can’t firebend. Being an idiot on the ropes apparently does wonders for strength, control, and flexibility.

Bo wrinkles his nose but takes it in stride. “A hard bargain, Captain, but I’ll take it.” He bows his head lazily, then snaps out a sharp, textbook-perfect salute and makes his way below deck to gather all of the crew.

He’s a good kid. Weird, but good.

“Captain.”

Agni. Speaking of weird but good kids…

“My Prince,” Jee returns, slowly turning around and looking up to where the Prince hangs, braced against a few ropes and suspended only by a lazy grip on one. “I take it you’ve heard?”

Zuko inclines his head, then lets go of the rope he hangs from and lands, catlike, on the rail. “Interesting choice of introduction to give to our new acquisitions.”

Jee shrugs and doesn’t let the strange intensity of the Prince’s stare faze him. “They’ve already almost died to the Avatar and been rescued by the ocean itself. There’s no point in easing them into how this ship works.”

Zuko hums lightly and crouches further on the rail, looking away from Jee to fiddle with his coat sleeves mindlessly.

Jee takes a cautious step forward, and when that isn’t met with the Prince disappearing from one blink to the next, walks over until he stands with his back to the rail and the Prince a few feet to the side. “Will you try to shift again?”

They’ve all seen it. The echoes, when the Prince truly syncs to the music, of wings and scales and claws chasing his steps. They’ve seen his skin crack into puzzle pieces that would make a behemoth. It’s instinct, too. It’s looking at the Prince and thinking, _ this is the sun, this is the fire, this is the winged creature that can kill and chooses not to. this is the wyrm and the wyvern that has yet to break its eggshell open. here are his scales and here is his breath and here is his violence and here is his care and here lies his hoard and here there be dragons and here there be flame. _

But no matter how hard the Prince tries, no matter how high he climbs on the rigging and how much he moves with the fire, it has only ever been echoes. It has only been the burning egg shaking and cracking but staying stubbornly whole.

The Prince shakes his head minutely on Jee’s left. “I’m… _ missing _ something. A part of myself. A part I need. I can’t feel enough to break through. Something took a part of me, and now I don’t know what rage is supposed to feel like and- and now I know that I _ need _ that. Something took that from me. Someone took that from me.”

Jee turns his head to take in the Prince’s profile as he processes. Finally, with no condolences he can offer or suggestions he can give, he asks very quietly, “Are you going to get it back, then?”

The Prince nods grimly. “Yes. Even if I have to go to Koh’s lair and crawl my way out.”

Jee winces. “That seems torturous and a bit extreme.”

Dryly, the prince says, “Half of the crew would say the same thing about music night, Captain, but that seems to do nothing to stop you.”

By the time Jee stops laughing, the Prince isn’t anywhere to be seen on deck. Jee isn’t overly worried, though. Prince Zuko always opens music night. He’ll come back.

-

So, Kyoshi Island. First impressions: cool fish, nasty sea monsters, nice weather, scary weaponry, wildly attractive warrior queens, and really stuffy kidnapping sacks. The rope ties are nice, though. Quality stuff. They only chafe a little.

Sokka’s mostly just trying to do the math as to how two people in Water Tribe colors with Water Tribe styles and with their friend in autumn oranges and blue arrows could ever be confused for Fire Nation spies. Technically, they are trying to drag the Fire Nation over to Kyoshi Island, but there’s no subterfuge about it. They just need to set a trail.

Yeah, okay, that doesn’t sound good even to Sokka, and he even knows what exactly they’re protecting by baiting the Fire Nation over here. Still! They aren’t spies. Spies implies a level of competence and subtlety that none of them possess.

Ah yes, the classic trial defense: I and my companions are too dumb to be malicious or otherwise accomplish a malicious task set for us with any degree of success.

Ok, Sokka’s mostly just bored, they’ve been walking for a long time, and there’s nothing to look at when there’s a sack on his head. He’s a little on edge with everything, and if he stops thinking a mile a minute, he’s probably going to try to maul someone. And everyone here has really sharp fans that will gut him like a penguin fish.

Boy, being kidnapped really does not feel great.

Luckily, just about when he’s ready to risk the fans if only so he isn’t so desperately bored, he and the others are shoved to the ground on their knees. The classic fun position to be in where you aren’t executed and everyone gets to go home and be friends.

Sokka is beginning to think that, despite all of the beauty of the place, it was a really bad idea to come to Kyoshi Island.

Then his kidnapping sack is torn off of his head, and the leader is standing in front of him, and Sokka decides that Other Sokka should shut up because it was obviously the best idea _ ever _ to come to Kyoshi Island.

Now, if Sokka hadn’t been given the Interim title and all of the ceremony and history that came with it, he might be royally offended at being beaten by a couple of girls. The problem is, he was declared Interim Chief and made to sit through Gran Gran’s long and oddly engaging lectures on the history and importance of the binary system and the brutality of both halves. And his sister learned a lot from those scrolls of hers that she could easily kick his ass with, intentionally or unconsciously.

(In another life, of course, without Agni’s words rolling in the wake of the red sky, the South would have followed the lead of the North and abolished the position of Chieftess to ingrain some measure of goodwill with their sister tribe in the hopes that it would give them a little more help once the next massacre arrived at their door. It wouldn’t do anything at all. But here, with the sun itself warning of broken balances, the South kept staunchly to their dual leadership and their Push and Pull.)

Right now, though, Sokka’s mostly enamored with the skill that the leader’s warpaint has been applied and the way the metal edges of her fans glint under the sun like a predator’s grin. The fact that she could also probably kick his ass without needing a sneak attack or an entourage is just a bonus. It’s actually more of the main attraction, but _ Spirits, _ she’s also really pretty in the most warlike way possible.

As if sensing the fact that Sokka is mooning over a girl, Katara shifts her weight next to him to step on his calf with her whole shin and as much body weight as she can. “Shut up, Sokka.”

Sokka scoffs and would put a hand to his chest in mock-offense were it not for the part where he’s being held at fanpoint with ropes keeping his hands bound. “I didn’t say anything!” he complains lightly.

Two of the leader’s soldiers flanking her blink very slowly and Sokka gets the distinct impression that they’re taking the time to roll their eyes.

Sokka takes a quick, sharp glance around before facing the leader again. They’re in the middle of a town square right now, with a tall prisoner pole at their back that probably makes public executions via throwing knives pretty easy. There’s a very nice statue at the top that’s probably symbolic in some way. The houses behind the leader are simple and snow-dusted, but numerous and tightly packed. It’s the look of a village working lean but strongly.

An old man shuffles forward with his hands tucked behind his back, and the leader steps to the side, deferring to him as he picks his way closer to Sokka and his newly minted family. He sniffs and reaches out a hand to tilt Sokka’s head, jostling his wolf tail into swinging.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Katara says quickly, sharply, like an icicle crashing against the ground, “my brother is a Southern Warrior. He has fangs and no one here wants him to have to use them.”

She’s right. It is taking an awful lot of conscious effort to not bite the old man’s hand. 

Thankfully, he removes it, taking Katara at her word. He takes in the appearance of his captives and sighs, turning to the warrior queen. “What crimes are they charged with, then? He certainly looks like a Southern boy.”

“They publicly announced they were waiting to be seen by Fire Nation patrols,” the warrior queen answers, snapping her fan open in a defensive position over her midriff. “My initial thoughts were that they were sent as spies, but now my working theory is that they’ve been sent as plants for the Fire Nation to use as reasoning to invade.” She nods towards Aang, in all of his arrows and Nomad colors, and then gestures with her fan toward Katara and Sokka and all of their Water Tribe decorations. “Having three non-Island natives visible from patrol could be twisted into us breaking our neutrality. Especially if one is dressed as a warrior.”

The old man sighs and tilts his head up to the sky. “Only enough proof to send their own boys to die in our waters, hmm?” He shakes his head and squeezes his eyes shut before making some intense eye contact with each of his captives individually. “What do you have to say in your defense, then?”

Sokka makes the sort of aggressive eye contact with Katara that usually only ensues when Dad asks who collapsed the watchtower again. Or who poured ice water down the back of the other’s parka first. Or who pushed who into the ice fields, and who was the one that dragged the other one down with them. Or who painted the mustache on his face while he was napping.

_ Who’s explaining and who’s doing damage control? _ They say silently to each other.

Before they can come to any meaningful conclusion, Aang apparently decides that now is his time to shine as the youngest sibling of this weird new family, by somehow slipping his thin wrists out of the bindings and bending himself up to the top of the execution pillar, perching on top of the carved figure.

“Hi,” he says, eyes bright and smile wide, but hands trembling subtly against the cold wind and nerves, “I’m the Avatar. Those are my sworn protectors. I think that’s a pretty good place to start with for a defence.”

And, well.

Damn.

He’s not wrong.

“Yeah,” Sokka decides, “what he said. Can you let us out of the ropes, now? And maybe teach me how to use those fans? I wouldn’t say no to lunch, either.”

-

Zoti opens the door without knocking and steps neatly to the side as a blast of blue flame scorches the corridor air she occupied seconds before. Her hands do not tremble from anything other than arthritis around the tray she carries as she patiently waits for the smoke to dissipate and carefully stomps out the few embers close to her hems.

Once the air is clear enough for her old lungs, she ducks into the room and shuts the door behind her promptly. It does not do to have open doors in the palace. Open doors invite visitors, invite blasts of flame and suspicion. Closed doors invite only eavesdroppers, and Zoti is the Matron. She is the queen of the eavesdroppers.

The Princess is pressed against the wall, hand shaking as she bats at her forearms, smothering the blue flames now spreading up her arm wrappings. 

Zoti moves efficiently, falling to sit next to the Princess and setting down her tray quickly, no matter how much her old bones protest their treatment. She gathers up the water pitcher and takes the Princess’ hand, pouring the water gently over the singed wrappings and the blisters on Azula’s arms.

She hums very lightly while she works, taking the fabric away from the skin as smoothly and painlessly as she can. She smooths over the grooves left by the fabric and cleans out the scabs pulled away by the blue ribbon. She cannot bandage them any more than they are by the ribbons. The Firelord will not tolerate weakness beneath his roof, but he allows vanity. So long as one is hidden by the other, there is no real conflict.

Azula does not wince while Zoti wets the cloth and cleans the fresh burns left by familiar hands. She does not wince when the herbal paste is spread over new blisters and old scar tissue alike. She is a very strong girl.

It makes Zoti want to vomit. But Zoti has served in this palace for twelve thousand sunrises and she has not gone this long without seeing children grown up far too fast and smelled burnt flesh. Zoti is a very strong girl as well.

“What reason did he give?” Zoti asks, as she finishes spreading the paste and moves her grip to Azula’s fingers, stretching out the tendons and manipulating her hand until she is satisfied that the most recent bout of injuries did nothing to Azula’s range of movement.

Azula stretches out her fingers and stares at her unmarked hands. “He doesn’t need one. He never has.” Her lip curls into something sad and broken and angry. “He claimed it was because I wasn’t aiming my fire properly.”

Zoti sighs and places the Princess’ old ribbons on the tray with the water pitcher, to be taken back and mended if possible, or otherwise turned into hair ribbons for servants loyal to the palace. “I am sorry we cannot do more to protect you, Princess.”

Azula barks out a laugh, harsh and sharp. “Your apologies can do nothing. He wasn’t wrong, either.” She casts a baleful glance to the discarded, singed ribbons on the tray. “My emotions triumphed over me and my training failed. I am getting sloppy.”

Zoti snaps her fingers in front of Azula’s face. “No. You do not get to place the Flameless One’s sins on your own back.” Azula is very good at lying to everyone around her. She is even better at lying to herself. “He is branding you like cattle because he can control you. He would brand the Great Spirits themselves if he could. You are strong, but you are young still. You should not need to be strong enough to stand against anyone alone.”

Azula snarls half-heartedly. “Should means nothing, Zoti.” She hides the worse arm behind her, disguising it as a shift of her weight.

“Oh, less than nothing, Princess,” Zoti says pleasantly, taking Azula’s available hand and guiding it to the dagger the Princess wears on her hip at all times. “It is an empty promise from the Spirits, that I will grant, but it does not change that you are not at fault for this. What should be is not a reflection of what will happen, but what is right to happen. This is not right. This should not happen. This has happened. It remains not right. Your skin is not at fault for burning; it is the fault of the flame and the one that wielded it against you.”

Azula bears her teeth but slumps back against the wall. She turns her head so she stares at a far wall and holds out her hidden arm for treatment, while the other stays resting against the knife that Zoti had brought to Azula years ago, when the throne ceased to burn and the mantle of Matron spread heavy against Zoti’s shoulders.

Zoti takes up a fresh blue ribbon from the tray and wraps the arm methodically, in a back and forth criss-cross chaos that ensures the ribbons catch attention first, and not the red, cracked flesh beneath. The old embroidered ribbons of the past have long since been forced into plainness. It is harder to pick embroidered cloth out of a wound than it is smooth, and far too time-consuming to keep embellishing more ribbons that are singed and burnt a week after they are given.

This is familiar. This is routine. More than cleaning charred flesh off of the throne room floor. This is the quietude in the monster’s den. This is the gentle placation of the candle flame against the curtain in a house already burning. This is the back and forth, weave and weft, heal and hurt that has become so very easy.

Azula is a very strong girl. When her wounds are wrapped over again, tied tighter so the ends do not come free and burn when she attacks, she runs her fingers over the soft blue ribbons and flexes her hands and does not thank Zoti. When her brands are covered over again, she is mighty and proud like she should be. She is silent and watchful and knows where each of her limbs are placed in the corner she has hidden herself in.

Zoti has taught her well. Better than most firebending instructors could. Better than the Firelord could. Zoti has not taught her how to injure and be injured, like either of the aforementioned teachers. Zoti has taught her how to watch, to listen, to hide, to slink into the background and stay there. It is among her most valuable skills.

Then, impatiently, Azula thrusts her less injured hand out in expectation.

Zoti acquiesces, and slips the message scroll out of the handle of the water pitcher, presenting it in all of its small, intricate, valuable glory to the Princess.

She does not tear it open like the feral creature she is below all of her silks and scar tissue, because she has been taught better than that. She is elegant and careful, unwrapping it in the cradle of her hands, carefully hidden from sight. If Zoti hadn’t handed over the small paper scroll herself, with all of its delicate, small writing already memorized, she would not know that Azula had it, much less is reading it currently.

When Azula is done, she closes her palms together and takes in a deep breath. She keeps her eyes open, because she knows better than to let her guard down, but her thoughts take up her sight.

Zoti already knows what the note says. What the Blue Oni mark stamped on the bottom represents. This is the truth. This is word from one of the dozens of exiled and disgraced servants that wear the mask of the silent, singing shadow of the spirit of justice.

Azula raises her hands and throws the note into the air like she would a dagger. As it falls, sadly and windingly through the air, it is shot down with a perfectly aimed dart of blue flame and is nothing but ash before it hits the ground.

The Princess drags in a shaking inhale and laughs. Laughs quietly and angrily until it is a choking, silent sob in the back of her throat and messy tears over her cheeks. Laughs until there is no sound but the slight swish of cloth as she shakes against the wall.

Patiently, Zoti shifts herself and gently guides Azula’s head to her shoulder.

Azula is a strong girl. That does not change the heat of her tears. It does not change the fact that her fingers curl in Zoti’s sleeve with just enough force not to tear the time-worn cloth.

If the ashes of the palace could speak, they would scream, but the ashes in front of them both would whisper secrets. Would whisper, “The banished one has found the Avatar” into the shaking silence.

Zoti knows what that sounds like to the ears of the Princess, blocked with the roar of a tyrant’s flames. Knows that it sound like this:

_ He has freedom and salvation. You have nothing. _

Oftentimes, Zoti marvels at what a mother’s love has made the children of the palace into. Even moreso, she marvels at what a father’s ambition has made the offspring of these halls. Now, she can even marvel at the cruelty of the Spirits themselves.

But for now, Zoti is a silent wall of quiet support in this dark, cold room that smells of fresh ash as the Princess cries away the grief of a childhood long lost with one hand still wrapped around the hilt of her dagger.

For now, Zoti holds her screams behind her teeth and says nothing.

-

They’re all gathered up by some fresh-faced recruit with a shit-eating grin and a string instrument Liu Bo doesn’t know the name of to head up on deck for, as the boy put it, “mandatory music night, no exceptions, except for Cook”, which seems like a waking nightmare. 

Except here she is, on deck, as the sun hovers barely above the horizon and the second-sun-Prince-of-the-Nation melts out of the shadows by the mast and steals the instrument from the recruit’s hands without saying a single word.

Liu Bo feels painfully like fresh meat again, stumbling through the ranks of experienced men that already knew which armor joints have to stay oiled when the rock dust starts flying. The only benefit she has is that Rookie and everyone else rescued from the icy waters look just as out of their depth as she feels.

It’s like watching a bizarre theater production, really, seeing a wave of grizzled soldiers mixed with young men not even in their twenties, all pushing forward in a wave and pulling out thin crates and rickety stools from hidden alcoves everywhere on this wooden ship and fencing out a front row. They leave a strange amount of room between the front row and the crate already set up by the prow, where the Prince is perched like some terrible exotic bird of prey.

It feels a little like the day the Fire Sages came to her village when she was young. When they arranged the wood just so, bent the fire just so, chose the sheep-owls they would clip the wings from and set ablaze just so, and chanted their strange invocations just so. Except it also feels like a week out in the town, free from duty, walking into a bar and deciding that it would serve very nicely for a wild celebration for those that hadn’t died in the time in between breaks.

It’s disturbing, Liu Bo thinks, watching the common man, her brethren, commit acts of unthinking ceremony. Order where there should be none. Organization amidst chaos. Unthinking, ritualistic comradery.

It’s not the weirdest thing she’s seen or felt on this ship, to be fair. For Koh’s sake, it’s the only wooden ship she’s ever seen in Fire Nation colors, and that’s the most mundane odd thing about the vessel. But it is proof that someday she will be just as set in the same strange, unspoken, patternless routine as everyone else on this ship.

Then the Prince whistles, high and sharp and quick, and all of the meaningless background chatter dies in a wave as everyone drops into their seats or clings onto their mast of choice with which to spectate. Liu Bo and all of her fellows remain standing by the back, clumped together in an uncertain blob.

The Prince strums once, twice. He seems to make eye contact with everyone at once, even with one eye covered by a piece of brightly patterned fabric. He opens his mouth and inhales like he’s about to speak, and then thinks better of it.

His fingers move against the strings, and the soft sounds echo and amplify impossibly as [he spins them into the open air.](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401650233933824/zukos-song-from-chapter-14-of-remember-me-when) The world has narrowed down to the chords and the raspy words and the impressions of colors pressing against Liu Bo’s fingers, the ghost of ash in her throat and the thick silence in the spaces between plucked strings and careful breaths.

It’s a mourning song. Thick with bitter longing and ancient yearning. Simple in range and playing as a contrast to what it asks of its current audience to think on.

Liu Bo has long been familiar with the feeling of life taken by her own fingers and by the blessings she has been given. It is more familiar to feel another’s blood on her fingers than it is to feel someone’s arms around her. To taste her own ash as it burns someone alive than to remember what it was like to have someone claim they loved her.

She remembers now, what she leaves behind when the blood blesses her armor plating. She knows the graves and the negative spaces where graves should be that she has carved into the fabric of this world with flame and blade. The children that will mourn by both. The children that will be killed before they can mourn by both. The children that will never be because of both. The sisters and brothers and fathers and mothers that will never see life in the faces of those they called family and friends.

She remembers now, more sharply than she has at any other point in her life. More than the exhausted musings, staring at her shaking, mud splotched fingertips in a single-person tent with four others. More than the drunken ramblings with frightened new recruits that will die before they can understand what she means about the blood caked under her fingernails.

Not for the first time in her life, and most certainly not the last, she curses at this damned war that has been raging for as long as she has lived.

Beneath the Prince’s mask of patterned fabric, Liu Bo could swear that she sees a faint blue and purple glow.

When it’s done, when it’s over, when the Prince and his chords are still, when the wolf ceases to howl and silence eats the spaces between each soldier, Liu Bo can’t even say if she’s crying, or if this wrung out sensation is just what the music has gifted her. If this stirring, bleak, bitter rebellion deep in her gut has always been there, sleeping, or if it has run its path through her veins in the time it took for the song to run its course and lodged there.

She doesn’t have long to wonder, though, before the recruit that gathered them all together breaks the careful line between performer and audience and takes the instrument right from the Prince’s hands like the Prince had taken it from him, like he isn’t afraid the royal will snap and demand his head.

More incredibly, the Prince just lets him. He slips off of the performer’s crate and allows the upstart boy to take his place. 

The recruit doesn’t hesitate for a single second to clamber up and stand proudly, like the dozen other soldiers she’s seen that were convinced they’d be better on a stage than on the battlegrounds. Most of them were proven right by bleeding out feet away from her, screaming their life away with the last of their voices.

The crew reacts like this is normal. In fact, they even cheer as the fresh-faced little imp stamps a little on the crate to verify its structural integrity, bows showily, and plucks out a few chords of his own.

“I have to sing a song for all of you, as per the deal to make sure that Cook doesn’t try to murder all of us for forcing him through this, and I am still slightly buzzed!” He crows, the words spilling out of him like a broken barrel. “This will probably be a hot mess, but it’ll at least be a little more energetic than our previous number. All thanks to our esteemed Prince for the opener!”

The Prince, perched on the railing, gives a nod. Behind him, the sun barely touches the horizon.

“Some notices for tonight, before the dance floor gets going,” the boy continues, “We are actively trying to intimidate Zhao, who’s still following us. He can fuck right off! We’re also celebrating a few promotions and our own survival, so I want to see no holds barred!” 

The crew cheers and the first few rows of people shove their seats back even more. The Prince hops off of his railing and waits on the hastily cleared dance floor, joined by the Dragon of the West, someone she thinks might be the ranking officer on the vessel, and a few of the people that helped feed the braziers back below deck.

The little imp plucks out a few chords that sound vaguely familiar to Liu Bo’s largely inexperienced ears, and the cheers grow in volume, with a few whistles and mangled phrases tossed in for good measure. The recruit smiles even more crookedly. “Sing along if you know the words!”

He proceeds to play the most [borderline-treasonous song](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401647629238272/bos-song-from-chapter-14-of-remember-me-when-im) that Liu Bo has ever heard. The bitter, questioning lyrics let out into the air with reckless abandon and snarling joy. 

In most places, it would be listened to, macabrely enjoyed by all of its audience, and promptly result in a court martial. 

On this ship, half of the people sing along in a rumbling, chaotic choir, linked arm in arm and watching the dancers.

Liu Bo doesn’t join in on the song, because despite how oddly familiar the tune seems, she doesn’t know any of the lyrics. She does watch the dancing though, hyper aware of the fact that a fourth of the dancers on deck are royalty. It’s full of odd movements she doesn’t remember seeing on any dance floor, strange flicks of the wrist and twisting motions amid heavy stomps and handsprings.

She can’t place exactly why the dancing bothers her so much until the singer hits the morbid chorus and the Prince flows out of a handspring leaving trails of fire in his wake, in a halo around him. The others follow suit.

They aren’t quite firebending, and they aren’t quite dancing either.

Her firebending may be like a limb for her, but the way that they all move makes it seem even more natural than that. It is not like they are manifesting anything, it is as though it has already been there and only now has become visible. 

_ Firebending comes from the breath, not the muscles. _

At her smoothest, using her bending is like moving her arm: a conscious act, a contraction of her being, something she must give strength and will to in order to have it accomplished.

She doesn’t know for certain, but she would bet that bending for them is like breathing: done without thought and without need to inform the body to complete the task.

And before she can track down every loose thread of her thoughts on the matter, all seven of the others dancers back off of the dance floor and leave the Prince alone as he blooms fire like flowers from a tree in spring, and the recruit, impish smile still in place, crows _ the march of the ashmakers, a hundred-thousand strong. _

It is then, as the whole crew joins in a chorus of voices, that Liu Bo realizes why the song feels so familiar.

She grew up with these chords played from the distant training camp, and she learned to march and dig herself out of the earth to the notes. In its original form, the song was meant to boost morale and keep time. It lauded the Firelord and the Fire Nation in its lyrics. It kept everyone sane, hearing the rest of the unit quietly mumble out the rhythm and being able to wordlessly scream out every grievance in the musical break between lyrics.

And this little imp sings it with questions in every line, with sacrilege and treason baked straight through the tune taught to every single young ashmaker heading off to war.

And everyone else sings along.

Liu Bo marvels at that, for a few breathless seconds. The sheer hubris is baffling. The sheer support is even moreso.

And then the Prince moves, and behind him, there are wings that stretch up and up-

He moves, and he is struck through with scales-

He moves, and he is chased by a tail curled in an impossibly large spiral-

He moves, and there is something within him and without him that echoes-

He moves, and Liu Bo relearns what the word fear means.

The voices keep singing, impossibly. All of the second-sun-Prince-of-the-Nation’s men and women chanting meaningless phrases as this strange, scaled spectre manifests on their deck, mere inches, mere seconds away from pulling itself into the physical world. 

It is terrifying.

And then it is over.

The music ceases, and the world goes back to normal, as if it didn’t fracture at the edges and let some strange scaled thing crawl out for the briefest of seconds where the Prince was supposed to be.

The song picks back up for the last two stanzas and the other dancers join back in as if nothing happened. As if Liu Bo isn’t terrified, feeling one sun set at her left and the other burning before her and ready to break this bleeding sky down.

The boy finishes his song, bows, someone else takes his place to start up another song, and Liu Bo stays rooted to her place. 

More dancers join, both bending and not, until the deck is ablaze with movement and sound and laughter and flame. The sun sets. The wyvern that followed in the Prince’s steps does not emerge again.

Liu Bo does not move. Not until Zhi and Rookie pull her with them down below deck and into the makeshift quarters of the new acquisitions.

She feels like fresh meat again. Scared and small before the enormity of what she has signed herself up for. Frightened by the flame. Petrified before the briefest glimpse of something that to others is mundanely supernatural.

She doesn’t much care for it.

But if the rest of the crew that dances with dragons is any evidence, she’ll learn to embrace it like the willow embraces the storm.

-

The warrior queen’s name is Suki, and she knows the patrol routes for Fire Nation ships like Sokka knows panther-caribou tracks, and Sokka might be just a little bit in love.

Suki says that the next patrol usually comes by two to three days from now, and promises to allow them to be seen by the ship to draw the Fire Nation away from the South, so long as she and her band of warriors can put on a show of chasing them off of the island. In the meantime, however, she has acquiesced to Sokka’s request to teach him how to use fans like hers. She has a strange glint in her eye when she agrees to start teaching him tomorrow, but Sokka is fairly certain he can deal with it.

She’s really smart, and really pretty, and she can hit a possum-rat with her fan from fifty yards out and kill it in one strike. Sokka hasn’t had much, if any, experience with attraction, given that the only person in the village that’s his age is his sister, but he’s discovering that he really likes people that can clean and butcher their kills in a minute flat.

Suki is gracious enough to share her kill with the- well, two of them. Aang is off somewhere eating berries and probably lying about his name some more. It’s in exchange for information about their encounter with the Fire Nation ships, sure, but it’s still a meal.

“He took down two entire ships?” Suki says, tone hovering between impressed and doubtful. 

“Sort of?” Katara responds, making a wiggly motion with her hand. “He mostly cleared the deck of one and then froze it up to the railings, but he did throw a whole iceberg at the other one. I don’t think the second one is going to come back any time soon. Or most of its crew.”

Sokka snorts a laugh and transfers his possum-rat leg to his other hand so he can gesture better. “Please, there was ice up to its crow’s nest. If there’s more than a dozen survivors, I’ll be surprised. The first ship got off easy, even if almost everybody on deck got tossed overboard.”

Suki nods and picks her own possum-rat leg clean down to the bone. She hasn’t smeared her warpaint once. Katara keeps smacking Sokka when he makes heart-eyes too hard.

Still, now that Sokka thinks about it…

“Actually, scratch that, I’m pretty sure that whole second ship is doomed,” Sokka corrects. “An iceberg that big? In the South Pole? It’d take months to melt, and it’s not like they could throw a whole bunch of fire at it. They’d burn down the place before they melted it enough to leave.” He internally debates on whether he should listen to his stomach and grab the last leg or listen to his manners and not do that. It’s really hard to get a consensus on the Sokka Council.

Suki shakes her head and cracks open the bones in a smooth motion that definitely _ doesn’t _ make Katara have to smack Sokka. “All Fire Nation ships are metal. They could bend that iceberg down to size in a week or so, if they had enough crew, and only have to worry about hot feet.”

Sokka tilts his head to the side. “No, the second ship was a wooden one.”

Suki freezes halfway through getting the marrow out of the bone. She sets the bones on her lap very carefully, like she’s afraid she’ll throw them if she isn’t gentle right this instant. “A wooden ship? Are you sure it wasn’t an Earth Kingdom vessel?”

Katara is the one who shakes her head this time. “No, it was flying Fire Nation colors. I saw some soldiers off to the side of the iceberg in red, too.”

Suki drags in a shallow, horrified breath and stands up in a rush, leaving the bones to fall out of her lap and onto the dusty ground. She snaps her fan open and hides her face behind it as she power-walks back toward the village proper.

Sokka scrambles up to his feet to follow her, jogging to keep up while Katara takes her time getting up. “Suki? What’s wrong?”

Suki wheels around to face the both of them, eyes bright and wide and wild beneath the dramatic reds and whites of her warpaint. “You have to leave as soon as possible. The first patrol ship you see, you are gone and you do not come back here.”

Sokka shifts his weight uncertainly, dusting his foot on the path. “I mean, that was the plan? We do have to get to the Northern Tribe as quickly as we can. We can’t really take too many return trips if we want to make sure the Avatar learns as quickly as he can.”

Suki laughs, the wrong kind of laugh that Sokka does sometimes, too, and snaps her fan down to her side. “You don’t understand,” she says in a snarl. “You didn’t take down just any Fire Nation vessel. Every other wooden ship in their navy has been decommissioned. There’s only one ship in the whole fleet that can burn, and it is the one you should _ never, ever touch.” _ She rakes a hand through the side of her hair and upsets her headdress. “If you destroyed it, then you might have damned all of us.”

Katara grips Sokka’s wrist in a tight squeeze of reassurance before turning her attention to Suki. “What do you mean?”

Suki closes her fan with a _snap_ and points it aggressively toward the closest coast. “The Spirits abandoned the Fire Nation, that's a well-known fact,” Suki says, voice oscillating between angry and scared. “But it’s also a well-known fact that the Prince of the Fire Nation _very much_ _has_ the favor of the Spirits. Damn near all of them. And we would know.”

Well, apparently it's a well-known fact everywhere else, but for two kids stuck in a village in the South Pole that purposely doesn’t contact anyone, it’s news.

Suki takes in a ragged breath and closes her eyes. “About a year ago, the ship you took down showed up on the horizon. We weren’t worried. We hadn’t heard any of the rumors, then.” She laughs bitterly again. “The Unagi has always protected us from threats by sea, and we thought this one would be no different.” She sweeps her arm toward the coast more aggressively. “Then the Prince showed up on the beach with the rest of his crew and asked for any information we had on the Avatar or a white sea dragon. The Unagi didn’t do anything to him or his ship. It protected them, even.”

Katara shifts uneasily. “What did he do?”

Suki shoves her fan back into her belt. “Absolutely nothing. We didn’t have any information, we didn’t attack him, and he left without a single burnt house. But if you hurt him and the people he cares about? I don’t think we’ll get the same courtesy after harboring you.” She casts her eyes down, and her posture slips just a little. “For a hundred years, Kyoshi Island has been neutral because the Unagi keeps everyone away. The Unagi won’t keep him away if he comes for your heads, and probably even if he burns down the whole island in the process. I can’t allow that.” Her head snaps up to glare at them both. “You either leave voluntarily the _ second _ you see a patrol ship, or I will force you to leave myself.”

Sokka nods numbly. “Understood.”

Suki gives a sharp nod in response and wheels around to continue back to the village. “I need to inform my people. Find the Avatar and tell him about the new conditions.” She glances back, with the setting sun reflecting off of her headdress. “If you see that ship again, or a boy with a patterned veil over his left eye, run like hell and don’t stop.”

And on that cheerful note, Suki leaves them both behind next to a smoldering campfire and the other half of the possum-rat. Strangely, Sokka doesn’t feel hungry anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, well, well. We've hit chapter 14 and a mess of other milestones.
> 
> Between last chapter and this one, y'all turned up and gave me over a thousand new hits, and as of posting this we are inches away from 16k. Y'all. Y'all. I am feeling validated in this chili's tonight. In doing this, you have also overtaken my previous most popular fic, so I am buzzed as hell! You might have been able to tell how happy I am, considering this chapter clocks out at a word count over part two of the series. Doing so pushes me over the line to have over 300k words posted on this site.
> 
> To celebrate, I have made other content! If I'm honest, it was to fight off writer's block with a stick, but here it is:  
[Zuko Art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401656884051968/no-grave-hold-my-body)  
[Azula Art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401652858552320/no-grave-hold-my-body)  
[Zuko's Song](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401650233933824/zukos-song-from-chapter-14-of-remember-me-when)  
[Bo's Song](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/620401647629238272/bos-song-from-chapter-14-of-remember-me-when-im)  
If anyone is struck by the urge to make anything for this story, please do. Seeing content made from my content fills me with indescribable joy.
> 
> You all are absolutely lovely. Stay safe. Please drop a comment if you can.
> 
> EDIT: some of you wanted the songs on other platforms, so here you go:  
[Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVijaFdLcG1yFqbRDpNDoy0INiUbWfJ6J)  
[Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/evt-aspire)  
[Bandcamp](https://zenza.bandcamp.com/album/no-grave-hold-my-body-songs)


	15. Chapter 15

The spectacle of the previous night apparently did its job. The gossip is that Zhao’s ship is now noticeably further away in its tailing than it was before music night. Strafing by Kyoshi Island and the sea monster therein will likely be enough to shake the good old disgraced Lieutenant off. They should reach the island by around sunset, even with the nasty bout of fog they’re about to dive into.

For now, though, Cook entertains himself by watching the new recruits stumble into the mess hall, now re-converted back from its status as an improvised medbay, eyes haunted from the previous night’s hazing.

Cook himself has only attended three of the music nights in the past few years. He hated each of them in a slightly different way. The dancing was nice, though. Even when the Prince wasn’t human for a little while. 

Oh, it was scary as shit the first time, don’t get him wrong, but Cook had already chased the little wyrm out of his kitchen once by then with no consequences, so it wasn’t hard to adapt. Anything that cowers from Cook’s broom is something that can be dealt with, fed, and cared for until it’s civilised enough to wait for meal times. Even Princes of the Nation that sometimes sit in the rafters eating enough fish to feed a full-grown komodo-rhino.

Then again, that could just be the fact that they’d all been marinating in the Prince’s aura for a long while before the wings ever tried to push their way through into the sky.

Cook isn’t an idiot. He hasn’t been alive as long as some, but he’s survived longer than most. He knows that it’s odd when the Prince says something will be and Cook’s mind automatically registers it as true without question. 

He’s spent too long being a contrary bastard for that to ever be normal. 

The Prince hasn’t ever been wrong about his statements, true, but that doesn’t change the fact that the first time the Prince told him a truth, when he said their eggs were rotten, Cook hadn’t even bothered to check before throwing them out.

It’s the kind of strange power that’s just become a given for everyone on this vessel. Their little scaled prophet clinging to the mainmast, speaking winding truths and staring at his crew like a miser counting out every last pinch of gold dust. Cook’s not even sure if anyone else has ever noticed the strange compulsion of everyone to just believe the Prince at his word. If it’s even belief, or just the sudden knowledge of the truth. If it’s a compulsion or a gift.

There is power in that kid, and it used to scare the living hell out of Cook before he knew better and got used to it.

Whatever it is, none of the fresh acquisitions have had the time to get used to it. They’re checking the corners like they’re afraid the Prince is going to be hiding there, to jump out and eat them alive.

Amateurs. The Prince doesn’t hide in corners. He only ever hides up in the rigging. And if he was going to ambush them, they would never see him until it was too late.

Oh look, they’re all clumping together and sitting in a corner table together. They’re having a heated, whispered debate, probably about who’s going to grab their food. None of them seem excited to leave the pack.

Cook doesn’t serve cowards. “They can come get their stew themselves,” he mutters to himself, adding more heat to the metal of the pot with a flick of his wrist, “one by one.”

“Oh, be nice,” chides a voice just slightly outside of the open window into the mess hall. “They aren’t used to being in a Spirit-tale yet.”

Cook leans a little bit out of his window and turns his head to see General Iroh standing against the wall. “Then they can learn. I won’t be carrying them soup when the Avatar comes back to finish the job.”

The General _ tsks _ lightly and hides his hands in his sleeves. “One of them made my nephew hide under a table, soldier,” he says lightly, lip twisted in something that’s either a grin or a snarl. “I’m not saying to coddle them. Just to enjoy the comedy of one of their number carrying that many bowls of soup. Limit the number of trips one soldier can take between the window and their table, perhaps? See if they can improvise or if they try to brute force their problem.”

Cook makes the chuckle-scoff he’s perfected over many years of being bribed with legitimately good jokes for more food. “If they drop it, they’re cleaning it up.”

“Of course,” Iroh says sunnily. “I wouldn’t dare to inconvenience you.”

Cook rolls his eyes and turns back to the stove to give the pot a few good stirs with a spoon before leaning back out of the window and pointing it at the General. “You are a flatterer and a devious old man.”

He smiles, that close-lipped, close-eyed thing that’s as comforting as it is hair-raising. “I’m also the Dragon of the West.” He takes his hands out of his sleeves - hands that have killed, that have led massacres and been soaked in more blood than Cook can ever conceive - and flashes three fingers at Cook with his smile getting all the more hair-raising. “Three bowls, please. My nephew is a growing boy.”

-

If Suki is being honest with herself, she has to admit that Sokka sort of rocks the uniform. She was a little skeptical about the warpaint at first, but after she fixed it up and cleaned up some of his misplaced lines, he looked pretty good. He’s already gotten the hang of the skirt arrangement too, which is sort of a surprise and sort of not, given his South Pole origins. Heavy, draping fabrics are fairly commonplace down there.

She is however, very much amused with his current progress on fan work. He hasn’t managed to cut himself, yet, but that’s mostly courtesy of the armored gauntlets over his forearms and his quick reflexes keeping his feet out of the way of his dropped weapon. Her lieutenants on the sidelines of their little spar and in the other training areas have stopped laughing at this point, though, so that’s a good sign he’s getting better.

It’s fairly clear that he’s largely used to bludgeoning weapons, or at the least much more blunted blades. It’s also fairly clear that the decision to use said weapons was for public safety as much as personal safety, because even if he has a tendency to lose his grip on the fans or curl them up close to his wrists, he is _ vicious _ when it comes to his approach.

Suki ducks smoothly under one harsh swipe and swirls around Sokka as he tries to readjust, tapping one of her fans against his loaned headdress tassels and the other against his unguarded stomach with enough force to train and badger instead of maim.

The next rush is still as brutal as the last, but slightly less telegraphed. Her fans tap on his wrist and the back of his neck this time before she slips out of his grasp.

“You’re sacrificing finesse for strength. That’s not how fans work,” Suki reminds him, leaning backwards to avoid one strike and neatly flipping away, flaring out both of her fans as she goes and landing in a crouch. “Be the eagle-swan, not the boar-bear. If you keep rushing through everything, you’ll make more mistakes. _ Think _ and attack.”

Sokka bears his teeth in a snarl that makes Suki’s heart do something weird for a split second, but his next attempt at an attack is most definitely smoother and more refined than before, and aimed to catch more vulnerable parts of her armor, too.

Well, well, well. He can learn.

“Watch your right more,” Suki calls out as she taps a quick line up his right side, where his ribs are under the padding, with one fan, while the other hits his wrist. She’s very pleased when his fan doesn’t fall out of his grip like it did the last half dozen times she’s pulled that trick.

He huffs out a breath and spins to face Suki again, his eyes as sharp and calculating as they’ve ever been. She takes a few preemptive steps back, gauging him, but he doesn’t leap forward like before. His elbows are placed properly on both sides now, but he’s just standing there in a low stance.

For the first time since she told him to try and score a hit, he isn’t the one trying to attack. He’s actually waiting for her to make the first move.

Well, Suki would hate to keep him waiting.

She lunges forward, poising to swirl out of the way of a counterattack from either direction-

And promptly falls flat on her face as her target disappears from her sight and her left leg is taken out from under her. 

The cool blade of a fan is pressed against the back of her neck a second later, before she can shake off the impact enough to even consider getting up.

“Nice,” Suki says, muffled into the floorboards. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Sokka offers, and takes his fan away.

Suki levers herself up to sitting as soon as the fan is gone and finds Sokka sprawled on the ground too, with one of his fans a few feet away and the other still in his hand. “How did you do that?”

Sokka shrugs and rolls over to pick his fan back up and stand back up. “You never said I couldn’t fight dirty, and you never said I had to only use the fans. I had to drop to the floor to get enough reach to kick your leg out from under you. It was a risk, because if it didn’t work then I’d sort of be stuck on the floor for you to go after? I also lost my grip on one of my fans. But it did work, so I technically won the exercise.”

Suki huffs out a laugh. “You got one kill hit after I got about forty, Sokka. You’ve got a way to go.”

Sokka resettles himself into a fighting stance, both fans held properly. “Sometimes you only need one kill.”

Suki rolls her eyes and picks herself up off the ground. “And sometimes you’re already dead a few dozen times.” She narrows her eyes as she takes in his painted face. “You smudged your war paint.”

Sokka only lifts his elbows that fraction higher and keeps his guard up. “I’m not falling for that.”

Well, tough shit for him. The arc of red toward his temples has bled into the white, and she’s not just going to let that stand. She keeps a thin box of paints stashed in her arm guards for exactly this purpose. She isn’t going to let him besmirch the proud tradition of clean harshness that Kyoshi was famous for.

Suki rushes him again, ready to dodge if he tries to pull the floor trick. He’s not dumb enough to repeat the same tactics though, and keeps his grip on his fans as she harries him to the center of the training room floor.

And then she flicks her fans closed, smacks one’s blunt edges directly on a pressure point that locks his wrist briefly, and stuffs one between her teeth so she can tug harshly one of his skirt folds, pulling it at just the right angle and sweeping his feet out from under him with the weight of his own armor and his own momentum.

Before he can even begin to recover from the fall that knocked the breath directly out of his lungs in the most efficient way possible, Suki already has both of his fans confiscated behind her and is straddling his chest to keep him down, knees clamping his arms to his sides and booted feet keeping his wrists to the floor.

“I said,” she says, taking her fan out from between her teeth, “you smudged your war paint.” She stashes her own fans in her belt as she pulls out the tin of paints and brush from her arm guards and gets to work cleaning up the lines he’d unsettled during his brief stint on the floor. She’s so focused on her work that she doesn’t notice he hasn’t even tried to squirm out from under her or put up any kind of complaints.

Eyes narrowed as she painstakingly redoes the line, checking for symmetry against the other side, she continues. “Your grip is getting better. Your footwork is pretty solid even if you aren’t used to the uniform yet. You keep trying to go for strength instead of maneuverability, which is the exact opposite of what the fans are meant for.” The brush carves a perfect curve of white against the smudged sections. “You definitely won’t be on the same level as a Warrior by the time you leave here, but you should be able to survive.”

Sokka makes a punched out squeaking noise.

“There. Done,” Suki says, wiping her brush off on his collar and storing it and the tin of paints in the arm guards again before planting one foot next to Sokka’s arm and pivoting back to standing. She offers a hand down to Sokka.

He stays on the floor, not moving a muscle, staring up at her with wide, startled eyes. He makes no moves toward his fans either. If this is another attempt at a surprise attack it’s a bizarre one, for sure.

“Captain,” one of Suki’s lieutenants calls from the sidelines, voice slightly strangled. “I think we should break for lunch. Give the training a quick rest.”

Suki steps away from Sokka and wheels around to face the others, who are all frozen, some seemingly in the middle of battle, watching the fight. “Alright.” They do look a little off of their game for some reason. Some of them look tired while others look like a giant koi spotting the Unagi.

The lieutenant that spoke first nods and snaps her fingers, dragging the Warrior closest to her out of the training hut. The others follow suit sporadically.

Suki turns back to Sokka and holds her hand back out. “Well? I don’t count you as someone who’d want to skip a free meal.”

Sokka squeaks again. Suki’s beginning to think that maybe she should have been softer in her takedown. She might have broken something.

“Do you need me to carry you out?” she asks.

“No!” Sokka yells suddenly, and scrambles to his feet, ignoring the hand completely. He scrabbles against the floor to pick up his fans and sheathe them at his belt. “No, nope, no, everything is totally fine, I’m going to go grab some lunch- see you later, Suki!”

Suki frowns as she watches him sprint out of the door. Was it the war paint? She’s done the same thing she did to him to other Warriors before, and it never made them react like that.

“What’s his problem?” she mutters.

-

“Aang?” Katara calls, swinging around a thicket of trees. There’s a heavy fog settled over most of the island and beyond, and it’s been whispering to her ever since she woke up. Not enough for her to understand, but enough snippets to keep the hair on the back of her neck pricked from something other than the cold.

“Hey Katara,” Aang responds, back to her as he runs an oddly large comb through Appa’s fur. She doesn’t know how to read him like she does Sokka, yet, but his shoulders are a little more slumped than normal. He hadn’t been in their loaned room when she woke up, and he hadn’t been asleep when she dropped off.

“Did you get enough sleep?” she asks, risking a few cautious steps into the clearing and gauging how Aang shifts his weight before continuing forward. “I know you were worried yesterday.”

Aang shrugs and doesn’t say anything. Katara doesn’t know him well enough yet, but she suspects that’s probably a no from him. He’s not the best at admitting to weaknesses, which is something Katara had to claw down shred by shred in Sokka, before. She’s ready for this new challenge, too.

“It wasn’t your fault, you know. You didn’t know. The ship had Fire Nation colors. You were in your rights to attack it.” She isn’t even sure if Aang and the Avatar are one and the same, yet. She can’t quite reconcile the soft-spoken, grieving child at the Southern Air Temple with the harsh demands of the ancient Spirit at the Southern Sea. Can’t see the avenging, lethal creature breaking whole ships against his rage in the thin little boy gently guiding a comb through thick fur.

“No, I wasn’t. I should’ve known better.” Aang’s voice is nothing if not clinical. There isn’t an inch of bitterness or self-recrimination that carries through. His tone is as blank as his smiles are sometimes, if she looks close enough.

Katara shrugs and takes another few steps forward until she’s shoulder to shoulder with Aang. “But you didn’t. Neither did I. You’ve been in an iceberg for a century. I doubt the Spirits though to notify you about who they were favoring.”

Aang shakes his head again and keeps combing the same patch of fur through. “I shouldn’t have attacked that ship. It wasn’t right in the first place. I don’t know- I-” he breaks off and guides the comb through the fur with more deliberate care.

Katara hums slightly and moves over to Appa’s head, scritching around his horns. “You weren’t in control once you started glowing, were you?” It’s a guess, but given the way Aang’s hands stall in their grooming, it’s a correct one.

“I’m just- not good at being the Avatar yet. I’ll get better. I promise.” He switches to a new swathe of fur and starts from the ends. “I won’t make that kind of mistake again. I won’t lose control like that again.”

Katara stands on her tiptoes to scritch the top of Appa’s head and run her fingers over the softer fur of his brown arrows. “You probably will, actually. We’ve got a long way to go to get North and a lot of people out to kill us. We’ll need that kind of violence. You might not like using it, but you might have to.” She sends a quick, reassuring smile his way and makes sure to keep herself out of his space. “Odds are, we’re going to make a lot of mistakes trying to save the world. We can only try our best to learn from them and keep moving.”

Aang’s shoulders hunch just that extra inch that makes Katara curse herself. “It’s- it’s not the creed we were taught in the Southern sect. Nonviolence whenever possible. Kindness whenever possible. Mercy whenever possible.” He shifts his weight to his left foot. “I had to learn from the North, too, but I don’t- I can’t give myself that much slack. I can’t just justify everything because I’m ending a war. I can’t tell myself it’s alright to do heinous things in the name of peace. I refuse to let my name be used to paint all of my people in blood.”

Katara doesn’t want to push the issue. She can see the tenseness in the lines of his arms and the set of his jaw. 

She can’t understand his ideals. Mercy and nonviolence are the kinds of things that don’t survive a century of war. She was never taught any of those. She was taught to guard her chest and be quick on her feet and even quicker with a knife. She was taught to despise the color red, trust only family, and treat every scar with reverence. Violence has been central to her education. It has been central to her life. To her people. Blood has long painted her people, massacred and desecrated. Her actions can paint them no further in what they’ve already shed.

She can’t understand him. But she can respect him.

She can’t decide if he’s been given a mercy or a curse, growing up with his now-extinct culture surrounding him. He knows exactly what he lost. He knows about the pacifists whose lives are captured only in bones dashed against the rocks. He knew them. He learned with them, played with them, bent with them. He knows what he has lost. He knows what the world has lost. He knows of poems that will never be spoken again, songs that will never be sung, history that will never be told, bending styles that will never be taught. He knows of it. He can break the century long silence of the dead on the matter. But he knows he is alone. He knows he is the only one that can shatter that silence like marrow against stone. The weight of a thousand ghosts pressing on his mind and begging him to keep what is blood and ash and dust alive. The press of a million dead bowing his shoulders and burdening his fragile, young spine.

Katara does not have that. She never learned to bend with others at her side. She has been the lone wolf howling to the sea for as long as she can remember. She was not given teachers that could tell her what the shift of her feet meant to the waves. She had to learn with salt and brine and ice against her skin what the words meant. A thousand poems spoken to water, songs sung as the ocean danced with its children, and history long-kept by the waterbending storytellers had died before she howled her way into the world and first made the water jump. There are no Southern benders but her. No one to guide her hands and tell her the forms, to correct her stance and raise her wrists. Her whole heritage is learned through sea salt and blood and sweat, alone atop the iceberg. She knows nothing of what she has lost. There are no silences she can fill with anything but her own pleas to understand what she has never been permitted to learn. She cannot raise a culture from the dead. It died before she was ever allowed to carry its burdens on her fragile, young spine.

It’s the kind of thing that neither of them can share with anyone else. No one will quite understand. It’s the nature of the extinct creature. She can understand the feeling of unimaginable loss, but hers is of a different texture than his. Hers is measured in blood-spattered snow and half-empty huts full of vengeful relatives. His is measured in bones and ancient resting places that yesterday echoed with warmth and light and love.

What a magnificent hurt it is, to be so young and pained and apotheosized by the world itself to drag the empty shell of what used to be something greater than flesh and bone by the rotting corpse.

They’re the last of their kind, the both of them, sitting in silence and grooming what is probably the last tame sky bison in the world. A menagerie of unique creatures in the foggy forest, crouched over the words that they cannot say and the truths they cannot admit and the survivor’s guilt that bows their necks and crushes them beneath the weight. Young relics of long-dried blood.

The silence stretches between them, filled only with Appa’s heavy breaths and low rumbling and the slide of fur against combs and fingers. 

The mist keeps whispering, though. And though she can’t understand what it says, Katara dreads whatever it is it is whispering about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Suki is used to being around cool lesbians that don't want to make things awkward with their commanding officer. She has no idea what to do with a disaster bi like Sokka.


	16. Chapter 16

“We won’t be able to see any ships coming at this rate,” a Kyoshi Warrior grouses to one of her compatriots as they survey the mist covering the island almost to the peaks of the mountains and rolling out in a thick bank out to sea. She taps nervously on her thigh as she tries to squint through the haze, glancing between the distant form of the village, far below their perch on the mountaintop, and the hazy fog over the ocean.

The other hops up onto a higher rock and cranes her neck in an illogical attempt to gain the last couple of inches needed to miraculously see through the fog. “No one sane is sailing through this, anyway. Not with the Unagi patrolling and the route clouded.”

The first Warrior shudders lightly, and not from the cold mist seeping through the seams of her armor. “With who the Avatar wronged? The Unagi isn’t an issue for him. I was with the Captain when that freaky kid left. The damn fish was an honor guard for him out to sea.” She unfolds her fan nervously and uses it to fan the cold sweat away. “There’s a damn good reason we’re posted up here, and it’s to make sure that that kid doesn’t ever have reason to pay us another visit.”

The other Warrior shakes her head and scoffs. “I still think you all hit the alcohol stores a bit too hard. There’s no way that happened. Even the rumors we got later were just bard tales. Everyone knows that those exaggerate. Besides, even _ if _ you’re right, there’s no way he’d get out of the iceberg without a waterbender or a lot of damage to his ship. Damage that takes weeks to repair. Even if he came out unscathed and had favorable winds this whole way, what possible reason would he have to come here? Captain is just being paranoid.”

The first Warrior shrugs but doesn’t stop fanning. “I’d rather be paranoid than dead.”

“I’d rather be back in the training room than be up here!” The other Warrior dramatically flops down on her rock. She perks up slightly. “Did you see Captain’s takedown of the outsider?”

“Who didn’t,” the first Warrior sighs, sliding down to her own rock. “Lucky bastard.”

The other Warrior nods sagely. “Ugh. I’d say we have more to worry about with our competition to seduce the Captain than with whatever Spirit-tale _ might _ be coming in a few weeks if he isn’t dead, imaginary, or just never bothers to stop by. We have more pressing issues. The new guy is right here, and he already got her to do his war paint _ twice _ before lunch _ . _ It’s not like your fabled Unagi-tamer is coming right now!”

-

the Sun-Brother is coming. he is rising across the sea from the south as his patron descends toward the west. 

it has been a long stretch of time since the Sun-Brother last visited, casting warm rays against This Monster’s spines. since his hands cleaned away the netting wrapped around This Creature’s neck. not as long as some things. not as long as This Beast had been alone before he came. but a long time nonetheless.

in his wake, however, there is One That Chokes Ash Into The Water Currents And The Disfavor Of The Earth Into The Waves. This Monstrosity does not care for that one. This Monstrosity has been alone with nothing but sharp teeth and hunger for the sake of defending from those like that one.

the Sun-Brother is coming, in all of his hidden scales and stolen soul. in all of what has been awakened and what has been taken from the cradle before it could rise with him.

did you hear? didn’t you know?

the Sun-Brother is coming.

-

Bo looks up from his complicated rope braid as the sound of retching reaches his ears. He’s very familiar with the sound nowadays, being a sailor stuck on top of the deck most days, surrounded by occasionally drunk coworkers.

He sits up against the mast and scans the deck. Business as usual. No one by the railings that he can see from this perspective.

Ah, wait. He should check- Yup.

There’s the Prince, hanging onto the edge of his hammock, spitting out clear water.

Well. The peace was nice while it lasted.

Bo steps off of the mast and clambers onto the ropes, swinging around on the sturdy knots until he crouches a few feet away from the Prince’s cot.

The Prince opens his eye - wild, consuming gold, stormy and dark - and sighs, slumping against the edge of the sailcloth that he seems to use more often than his own rooms. Pale light escapes out of the neck of his coat, turning the loose hair gathered around his neck into cracks in the surface of white-hot magma. It shifts to an unnatural shade of blue for a few seconds before oscillating back to pure white.

That’s not the good type of glowing, from what Bo has so far gathered. The last time the blue showed up, the Prince immediately passed out after destroying a glacier. The time before that, he was spitting out water and salt rocks every few minutes. He’s never seen him glow white, either. He could be wrong, but the shade seems exactly like the shade the Avatar was wreathed in when he froze most of Bo’s coworkers solid.

Bo risks reaching out a hand to pat him on the back. The Prince doesn’t shove him away and get him tangled in his own rigging, so apparently Bo can learn social cues! Selectively, sure, but he can learn. 

“What are your orders, sir?” Bo risks asking.

The Prince shakes his head over the edge of his roost and clenches his hand. His shoulders shake for a brief few seconds with a kind of emotion that Bo is pretty sure humans aren’t ever meant to experience before he smoothes them out forcibly and takes in a few breaths of salty air.

“Full speed ahead,” he says, finally. “I won’t risk the ship again. When we get close enough, we drop anchor and I take the skiff to the island. We use the mist to our advantage. I’ll only take a few benders with me. The Avatar is on the island and I’m not risking more of my crew than I have to.”

Bo gives a sloppy salute and prepares to get to the ground as quickly as he can. “Aye, aye, sir. Do you want to give any of the new recruits a spin, or just bring trusted crew?”

The Prince sighs and spits out another mouthful of seawater, wiping his mouth with the back of his sleeve. “There’s a colony bender that fell from Zhao’s ship, around your age. He should be with the firebender with scars that prayed under the water,” he readjusts his face covering to sit more securely over his eye. “He can come with. I’ll let two others of the main crew join. Captain’s choice.”

Well, the Prince sure knows how to pick em. Figures he’d choose a friend of Bo’s rival in only name. Not that she’s aware of their rivalry yet. Nor is the Prince. Well, that’s only a maybe on the Prince front. The Prince has a tendency to overhear things he logically shouldn’t be able to overhear. For instance, Bo is not even going to _ begin _to question how the Prince heard Other Ensign Bo praying underwater, while battle raged on overhead. If he starts questioning it, then he will probably wind up losing his mind.

Bo clambers down to the deck and tosses a backwards salute to the Prince. He has to go talk to the Captain and deliver the news to the unfortunate recruit. He wishes the poor earthbending bastard good luck. At least Bo has been able to adapt to the weirdness on board at this point in his life. The other guy just gets tossed into this feet first, quite literally out of his element on the open sea.

At the same time, though, it’s honestly really fun to haze everyone. Mean, sure, but oddly entertaining. They’ll all be old hands by the time the moon is new, anyway. The last group of newbies to replace the sailors just too old to continue took a solid month. It was a very amusing month.

He can understand why the Prince is always so weird and cryptic with everything he says. It’s oddly satisfying to say some really strange shit and then leave without any explanation. Especially to superior officers.

Anyway, cheers. Time to go tell other people to join the teenaged Prince to go hunt the Avatar on a foggy island at sunset probably escorted by the murder snake bigger than their boat from last time.

He loves his job.

-

As Katara leads Aang back to the village for dinner at sunset, she can’t stop a shiver from rolling down her spine.

The mist has whispered from the second it first flowed from over the sea and down the mountains. It’s only gotten louder. It’s only gotten less understandable.

But now, as the sky starts to singe on the edges and the darkness encroaches from the east, it stops whispering and speaking and goes perfectly silent against her senses.

Somehow, that is worse than indistinct mutterings.

-

the Sun-Brother is here. he has left his large piece of driftwood with red fabrics billowing in the wind to take a smaller piece of driftwood to This Behemoth’s dominion, the Island That Must Be Protected.

he is gentle and small on This Monster’s hide as he takes driftwood and kelp off of This Creature’s spines and scales and climbs over sea-slick skin with ease. his hands are soft on This Beast’s barbels as he smooths away the stray bones from This Monstrosity’s old prey. the Sun-Brother is kind.

the Sun-Brother brings three Friends with him. one of them smells like the mountains and has the scent of pungent fear ensnaring his limbs like a good piece of prey should. the other two smell like the Sun-Brother and their fear is so nicely small that it doesn’t even make This Beast want to kill. it is delightful.

the Sun-Brother says meaningless things to This Monster in his soft, raspy voice. he says that This Beast has been very good and very dutiful and very strong to be so alone for so very long. he says that his ship, the large piece of driftwood that he has left behind, is to be protected while he is gone. 

he says that the one that follows that is Like Blood In The Water Speaking Ash To The Waves is an Enemy. that it should be kept away. scared away if possible. sunken if nothing else works.

he pets over This Monstrosity’s snout with no fear in his scent. he enters into This Creature’s maw unbothered. he takes out the sharp bone that’s been stuck between This Beast’s teeth for a few moons without shedding a single drop of blood from either of them. 

he is so very thoughtful. the Sun-Brother is such a good Brother to have. he is the only one since Master Painted In Bone And Blood that This Creature has never craved to kill.

the Sun-Brother gives one last pass over This Behemoth’s scales and sends him back to the waters as he returns back to his Friends and their driftwood. the Sun-Brother has business on This Monster’s charge. there is something on the Island That Must Be Protected that should not be there. the Sun-Brother is going to hunt it away and out of This Beast’s home. he is going to make it feel fear for all of the fears nearly snuffed short that also smell like the Sun-Brother.

This Beast is very smart. Master Painted In Bone And Blood spoke of vengeance once. This Monster can see the light of vengeance burning in the Sun-Brother.

so This Monstrosity sinks back into the waves and slinks toward where the waters are colder and smell more of blood and fire.

so This Behemoth raises its head above the surf and shrieks in one long, howling wail that screams over the sea.

did you hear? didn’t you know?

the Sun-Brother is here.

-

Zuko does not feel particularly good dragging others with him for this.

He knows what he is doing is not strictly moral. Hunting down a teenage boy - even if it’s just an ancient Spirit in the shape of a teenage boy - does not and probably never will sit well with him. 

Separated from the current circumstances, anyone else that hunted down a child younger than his little sister would likely cause him to make another deal until dawn with the Spirit his mother bought him a mask of once, and result in a certain cerulean demon hunting the hunter with double blades and silent, whispering wind.

But it cannot be separated from the circumstances, no matter how hard he tries. It is made impossible by some part of him that clings onto the rage he is allowed to feel still. It’s hard to say if it’s the human or inhuman parts of him that refuse to separate one from the other. He has a sinking feeling that it’s both. He cannot disregard the ice that ate his crew whole. Not even for a child.

Zuko isn’t supposed to be the Spirit of Blind Justice. That mantle is already taken by one of Fēng’s vassals. He cannot be impartial on this. He cannot be unbiased. It’s a simple impossibility of who he is.

The hunt doesn’t sit right with the part of him that is stubbornly human, the part that rares its head out of his skull and mutters about honor and guilt and seethes in the half-hatred it can still feel. It wants revenge, too, but it wants freedom more than it wants to lock itself into a nearly doomed expedition. It wants mercy for the prey, but only in the most selfish of ways.

The part of him that is something else is the one that howls for the hunt to the murky sky, like the Unagi screeching in victory as it leaves him to stalk Zhao’s vessel. It screams that this must be done. Not that it is righteous, no, but that it is what is the natural ugliness of the world that must be repaid in kind. That the child with the Spirit of the World running through his veins must be the stumbling deer in the woods, the frantically fleeing interloper, the one who attempted theft of hoard and now sees all that he loves burned down before him.

Zuko hopes he’s struck a balance between the two. 

The Avatar is careless. He is destructive. He does not realize his own power. He has hurt and likely will hurt again. He could callously massacre a thousand men and never face a challenge. He has power, and he has ignorance, and he does not know when to use one and abolish the other. 

So he must be taught to be careful. He must be hunted to know the fear he has wrought. It’s not kind. It’s not right. It’s nasty and brutish and primal and savage, as a lot of untamed nature tends to be. But it is what strikes a balance between the war drums that the ocean calls for and the mercy that quiet, small part of him wants to give. It is the closest course of action to both mercy and violence he can take. It is the best option amid every bad choice arrayed before him like a feast before an unworthy king.

So, he doesn’t feel overly good about his self-assigned task. He feels even worse, however, bringing his own people with him. Let alone the new, confused addition to the crew.

The whole reason he is doing this is because the Avatar carelessly hurt his crew. Bringing them along seems very, very counterproductive. But, on some level, it is necessary, and on another level, it is just comforting.

It is one thing to know that one of the largest sea monsters haunting the ocean is protecting his ship, but it’s another matter entirely to actually have some crew safely in his own eyeline. He may not have the teeth and terror of the Unagi, but he has fire and whatever else the Spirits are willing to give him.

Zuko would rather not have to defend an entire element to the Avatar. It would be far too easy for him to decide that all firebenders are meant to die, just as the airbenders did. It’s best to throw the Avatar off of his rhythm early before poisonous ideas worm their way through and latch cruel claws down.

Enter: a Fire Nation earthbender. The best physical demonstration against elemental discrimination Zuko currently has on hand. If there is anything that can cut off pure hatred of someone based on element and not on loyalty, this is it.

There’s also the fact that the earthbender is now on a naval vessel without any form of earth on board. It would be simple cruelty not to give him shore leave. His health is more important than Zuko’s comfort when it comes to going alone.

If it was entirely up to Zuko, it would only be him and the earthbender there to confront the Avatar. It’s not a matter of strength or force, after all. It’s a matter of unsettling the opposition and winning a psychological victory. Physical victory does not mean much. He does not need an army to make the Avatar question things.

Zuko, however, knows his crew. If he went to Kyoshi Island alone, let alone with an untested, unproven, untrusted new crewmember, he would not have the time to take his first steps onto the sand before an entire squad of firebenders would leave the ship to back him up. Asking for only one crewman to join wouldn’t be enough for them, and would probably only result in a high-stakes gambling competition for the position and a few thrown fists.

He hates the fact that he is endangering his own people on this best-of-the-bad-choices mission to hunt the Avatar. But it’s better to know exactly how many people he has to protect than to have a small caravan following him like the few times the crew managed to catch his absence while he went alone to the mainland.

On the other hand, the earthbender maybe should have been given more time to adjust. Granted, there wasn’t much time between La screaming about the Avatar again, now that the sea mist could locate the boy, and getting close enough to land on the island to really deliberate on his choices.

The crewman stares after the fin of the Unagi as it slips beneath the water with wide eyes and trembling hands. Admittedly, Zuko isn’t entirely sure of what he did this time that set the earthbender off. The barrier between what is unusual and what is routine for Zuko is somewhere between mist and nonexistent. The crew has largely stopped reacting shocked to most of the things Zuko does nowadays, even if the very human part of him still sometimes thinks _ I should not be able to do this. _

The Unagi is meant to be intimidating, however, so it’s possible that its appearance was enough to unsettle the earthbender. It may also be attributable to Zuko’s own ease as he scaled the sea serpent and walked unafraid through its maw.

Zuko mostly just wants to bathe in something other than salt water or sea monster saliva and get this whole thing over with.

He has an Avatar to hunt and people to protect. That’s all he can focus on for now without getting a headache.

“Take us in,” Zuko orders softly, scrubbing his hands free of blood from the Unagi’s old kills over the side of the boat as the two senior crewmen pick up the oars and restart their rowing toward the island.

-

The strange, roaring scream makes Zhao jump unsteadily from where he waits, gripping white-knuckled, against the railing at the prow.

Unnoticed by him, it also makes a few grim-faced soldiers behind him grip their weapons tighter and exchange glances, ready to make the hard but correct choice if their commanding officer chooses to continue through the murky, deadly waters.

By the railing and by the door to the officer quarters, two crewmen with mops make sure to grease the deck just that fraction extra. Just in case. For hygiene reasons.

Luckily for everyone on deck, it only takes the ghastly shadow of a massive dorsal fin cutting through the mist for Zhao to spin around and finally order a course correction far, far away from their current heading.

He marches towards his quarters, seething over this lost opportunity to pursue the Avatar and the Bandit Prince, and promptly slips on his perfectly mopped deck and lands heavily.

No one goes to help him up. It’s terribly misty on deck, after all. So hard to see anything. So difficult to sight the red rage and embarrassment coloring the Lieutenant’s face.

The crewman mopping by the railing sighs once the Lieutenant disappears below deck and half-heartedly returns to cleaning his own section. “One day, I’ll be the one that gets him to trip.”

One of the soldiers sighs as well. “We can only hope.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko: *climbs around on a giant sea monster like it's a jungle gym, talking to it like it's a baby animal*
> 
> Rookie:  

> 
> I forgot how big the Unagi was until I watched the episode again and??? that thing is giant. how. how are the giant koi not extinct if they're the main food source for that thing. jesus.
> 
> What's this? Y'all really turned out, and now this fic has almost four thousand more hits than it did two weeks ago! We've also surpassed 1000 comments! Hell yeah!!! Thank all of you so much!
> 
> Comment! Ask me questions! Here or on my [Tumblr!](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/)
> 
> <3 I love y'all so much


	17. Chapter 17

By the time the singing starts, it’s already too late.

But, of course, no one sitting around the fire of the town dining hall knows that. They’re all packed tightly around the hearth, working out the chill of the fog from their bones. They have no idea what has set foot on their island. They have no idea what has come out of the night and the mist.

They have no idea what beast is stalking them now, in the burning dusk.

But they will.

-

Rookie’s name isn’t actually Rookie. Obviously. His name is some messy conglomeration of overlong syllables that his mother tossed together desperately to make any paperwork shoving him into the military harder to fill out. She hadn’t ever wanted to marry his father. She hadn’t ever wanted him. This was her way of committing quiet rebellion. An attempt to keep her child with rock dust ground into his bones out of the battlefield, with his feet planted firmly on the ground. An attempt to keep another soldier off of the field.

It didn’t work out well. Obviously.

Otherwise he wouldn’t be wearing an army kit, crouched by a neutral village, bending out yet another pit trap while the Banished Prince perches on a rooftop above, golden eyes glowing against the growing darkness as Agni’s light quietly dies over the horizon.

Rookie goes by Rookie nowadays, because he has had much worse nicknames before, and because it makes sense. Unlike everything happening around him.

He’s been pretty attached to things making sense for a lot of his life. He’s gotten pretty good at justifications and reasoning. He’s well versed in the use of ‘because’ and ‘otherwise’.

Mom married dad because otherwise dad would have had her boxed up in chains and sent to a labor camp. Dad married mom because otherwise he would have had to marry a woman his own age, matchmaked by dad’s parents. Mom died because otherwise she would have to spend another day looking in the face of the son she never wanted and the husband she despised.

They had Rookie because dad was drunk and mom wasn’t allowed out of the house to get herbs to fix it. Rookie had to go to classes separate from other kids because his bending was like the enemy’s and had to be carefully controlled, suppressed, and civilized. Rookie had to join the military because his father signed all of the paperwork and told him to do something that actually mattered with his waste of a life. Rookie cried on his nineteenth birthday because he was older than his mom ever got to be.

Stuff like that. Cause and effect. Consequences guiding choices. Rookie can understand that.

He cannot understand most of anything that is happening now.

For one, he’s on solid ground and not being side-eyed by any of the other three people around him like he’s going to bury them alive. The other two soldiers are using two sticks they found to play a game in the dirt only a little bit away. They aren’t afraid of him. It’s as strange and unbalancing as it is weirdly nice. The Prince isn’t side-eying Rookie, because he’s staring very intently at the ground that he’s bending with the kind of focus that would be slightly off-putting even if he hadn’t seen the Prince clambering over the single largest animal Rookie ha sever seen not even an hour ago. That bit is just strange and unbalancing.

It doesn’t make sense. There isn’t any logic about it. There are no causes and effects Rookie can find that would lead to this scenario.

But he’s here, making pit traps and loosening the earth up. He’s here. He has no idea how he got here and he doesn’t know where he’s going to go next, but he knows where he is. He can work with that, at least. He can work with a task.

It’s always strange to earthbend. It’s not like firebending is supposed to be. Nothing like what is baked straight through every military exercise and school lesson. Nothing like it, and yet everything like it all at once. Something to do with the constancy of both elements, he supposes.

Fire comes from within, though. That’s why it’s superior. Firebenders can thrive anywhere. He is weak, inherently. He feels nauseous and hopeless every day he is away from solid ground. Firebenders just need to control themselves, control their breaths, and control their inner flame. Agni may give them strength, but they don’t require his light to be healthy. Sages even spend years belowground, away from sunlight, to prepare themselves for their positions. Rookie can’t spend a week away from port without wanting to throw up. He passed out once, a month into a voyage.

And when it comes to bending, Rookie has to have something already present to work with. He has to order the earth and shove it around and demand its obedience every time he uses it. He has to command and subjugate a separate thing from himself. Not like the discipline and purity of firebending. 

It is both antithetical to the rigid self-control taught in all Fire Nation schools and barracks and utterly compliant with Fire Nation military doctrine. He hadn’t really considered that in depth, before. Before the first songs of that night buried underneath his skin and into the iron of his blood and the stone in his marrow and made him question. Before the bloodied, burning sky split apart as a creature clawed its way to the lip of reality and lost its grip.

That didn’t really make sense, either. Logic doesn’t really work for any of it.

Rookie gets the feeling that logic won’t work for most of what is happening to him. He has no idea what consequences could even begin to inspire all of the choices taking place around him. What ‘because’ or ‘otherwise’ could explain the young royal with a dragon in his skin hovering above.

He finishes forcing the thin crust of dirt over the small chasm he’d ordered the earth to carve itself into and falls back to parade rest. This is the dozenth pit he’s dug in the thin alleys and around the wooden houses of the quiet village. He doesn’t know exactly what the Prince is planning, but he can guess.

Rookie has been on a hunt before. A group of animals, whether carnivorous or not, is dangerous. It’s best to isolate one animal from the rest, to avoid the stampede and the bite to the jugular from behind.

He stands to attention as his last few commands rumble over the ground in front of him and the soil stills.

“We move to the village center, next,” the Prince announces quietly, his voice raspy in a way that registers on just this side of smoke-burnt instead of inhuman. “Senior crewmen, you’re on the outskirts. Peel anyone that isn’t the Avatar away and herd them into a pit. Try not to burn down the village in the process. Junior crewman, with me.”

Rookie glances away from where the Prince perches on the ridge of the roof to check that there isn’t a noticeable difference between the solid and trick soil, and when he looks back, the Prince is directly at his side and holding a small globe of flame, not a hair out of place and unbothered by the drop from a rooftop he had to take and shake off in the split second Rookie looked away.

It takes a lot of effort not to flinch from the sudden proximity, but Rookie thinks he may have managed.

The two firebenders from the more experienced crew salute lazily with their sticks, but stand to perfect attention all the same. Rookie has seen a lot of that strange dichotomy of deference and insubordination in the Prince’s crew. He can’t attach a cause to the effect yet, though. It’s just another one of those strange, conflicting eccentricities that set Rookie’s teeth on edge.

“And if the place starts burning?” one of the firebenders asks, lazily swinging his stick over his shoulder and back out into the woods behind him. Questioning authority. Questioning the plans of royalty. Of, possibly, divinity.

The Prince shrugs and the flame cradled in his palm jumps into a thin, dancing shape. “Try to snuff it out if you can. I don’t want collateral damage, but if it’s between a house on fire or your own safety?” The fire leaps in a circuit around his palm and explodes back out into a sphere, casting the shadows of his face in even more dramatic angles. “Leave it to burn. Houses can be fixed. Your lives can’t.”

The other bender laughs softly and tosses his own stick to the ground. “Those who sing the _ Siren’s _ song come first?”

Somehow, in a way that Rookie can’t explain, the Prince’s presence _ sharpens, _like he’s grasped onto an element of reality with claws and fangs that, before, he was ghosting past. “Always.”

Both of the other benders nod once more, and peel off into the misty darkness without another salute. The informality of it grates at Rookie, still.

Then, Rookie abruptly remembers that those two firebenders were the difference between being in a military squad and being alone with the decidedly idiosyncratic, almost definitely inhuman Prince.

He doesn’t know what ‘because’ or ‘otherwise’ is keeping him rooted to the ground now, instead of sprinting after everyone else and hiding where it’s safe. He thinks it may be the order given and the obedience drilled into him from birth. He thinks it may be fear. He thinks it may be this clawed, unusual loyalty that’s slowly sinking into his marrow.

The Prince sighs and shakes out his shoulders in a move that Rookie is pretty sure he’s seen messenger birds pull right before they rose into the sky. “Right, then.” The Prince casts Rookie a side-long, contemplative look. “How do you feel about being a distraction?”

Rookie’s mouth opens before he can think about it. “Pretty bad,” he says, and immediately tacks on a much weaker, “sir.”

The Prince grimaces slightly more than is standard and the flame in his hands swirls another thin circuit. “Understandable. Does it make you feel any better to know that I’ll be drawing the Avatar’s attention and everyone else should either wind up in a hole or occupied by the senior crewmen?”

Rookie shrugs helplessly, the tingling anxiety in his fingertips sparking. “You’re my commanding officer. I follow your orders.”

The Prince does a complicated series of very minute facial expressions before settling on one that’s somewhere between constipated and resigned. “Sounds like that might be as good as I’ll get.”

Rookie doesn’t say anything one way or the other, which is an answer itself.

The Prince winces slightly. He busies himself with looking everywhere but Rookie, and his eye lands on the tall punishment pole, topped with a figure that Rookie thinks might be Avatar Kyoshi, if she was very water damaged and wooden.

“Oh, that would be dumb,” the Prince says, seemingly in debate with himself. “I’d have to pray to a lot of Spirits to get it to work.” He tilts his head. “It would be dramatic, though.” He turns back to Rookie. “Thoughts?”

Rookie stares helplessly. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to gather from anything happening. What conclusions he’s supposed to draw and/or share.

The Prince sighs and straightens his spine, the flame in his hand dancing around his waist in a quick loop before returning back to lighting the way. “Crewman, my Uncle is going to kill me for this. But, on the bright side, you will not be the distraction. I just need you to make another pit and cover my back.”

Rookie shifts his weight, disrupting his connection to the soil slightly. He feels, briefly, the kind of boldness that rarely surfaces in him, but he finds often comes whenever the Dragon of the West is mentioned or threatened. “Sir, if I’m honest, I’d rather be bait for the Avatar than have to face the General after allowing you to do something reckless.”

The Prince laughs. Small, yes, and ragged, and as coarse as his voice always is, but it’s most definitely a laugh. Definitely delighted. Rookie rarely makes anyone even remotely happy with his presence. It’s a nice change. “Then you have excellent priorities, crewman.” he says dryly. “I’m still doing it, though. You can either face off against Uncle having watched my back, or having sat on the sidelines.”

“Sir, can I at least know what plan I’ll have to justify to the Dragon of the West before we do it?” Oh, boy, the line for insubordination came and immediately passed when he wasn’t looking, huh? The good news is, the Prince doesn’t seem offended. If anything, that tiny, slightly terrifying smile has only grown.

The Prince shakes out his shoulders again and turns to eye the punishment pole in the town center with an oddly glowing eye. “I will let you know what it is when I figure it all out. For now, I’m going to need you to make a trick moat around that pole, I’m going to need you to sing something as loud as possible, and I’m going to need you to not scream until everything’s done.”

Rookie winces but salutes anyway. “With all due respect, sir,” he says, with most of his brain screaming _ whywhywhy do you keep asking questions do you want to end up in an unmarked grave? _“Why would screaming be an issue?”

The Prince _ smiles _ and there is no ‘because’ or ‘otherwise’ that can adequately describe why the Prince has a maw full of fangs where he had normal teeth a few seconds ago. “I’ve heard from multiple sources that I can be slightly disturbing when I’m less restrained.” The half-mask over his left side glows from within with a distant tumult of colors. “Also, if you scream while I’m unfettered, I might just burn this whole village down to make sure the threat is gone. Instincts.”

Oh. Okay then.

Rookie would like to go sit down now.

But first, he has a moat to build and a Prince to defend. He can have an anxiety attack later, when he can reason out everything.

Agni, he hopes he can reason out everything.

-

In the town of Gaoling, there comes a bard.

Gan taps out a few nervous beats on his gheychak case. The stone walls of the dressing room he’s been afforded echoes the sound slightly. 

His legs still hurt from the pace he and his ostrich-horse had to adopt in order to make it to Gaoling in time for his winter set. He should have had more than enough time to make it if the Avatar hadn’t come out of hiding and made things difficult. It was only a few days travel between Nonna’s village to Gaoling, but he waited the extra day for the Grandmaster’s complete letter to be sent forward so he would have a better understanding of the situation, and he took his desert detour. Every important song of his deserves at least a cursory pass through the sands.

Gan drums out another quick few beats against his case and cracks the back compartment open again to grab out his papers. He’s not normally nervous in front of crowds, but he knows the significance of what he’s about to do. A century long search, coming to an end. A hunt, beginning. It’s the kind of thing that could make a bard legend, if Gan cared much about that sort of thing anymore. He shuffles through all of his messily scrawled notes just to make sure he has all of the details correct.

He may have the ability of artistic license, and he may only need to make something sensational enough to get people talking and get some coin, but he’s a professional, damn it. He aspires to accuracy. Mostly.

He tries to be as accurate as anyone can get when dealing with the matters of Spirits. He can pray all he wants for knowledge, but on the off chance he even gets a response, it’s likely to be more cryptic and dodgy than a late ninth century court poet.

Admittedly, his first number of the night is perhaps a bit more on the dodgy side of things when it comes to absolute surety of information and in a more modern, popular style than his usual pieces. He’s not proud of it, necessarily, but he’s had only a few days to scrape together enough lyrics to make a half-decent chant to worm straight through the ears of his audience while also conveying just how much everyone should stay out of the way of the two imminent disasters set to hit the mainland any day now.

Is invoking all four elements in his song necessary? Probably not. Just mentioning the Spirits of fire and earth would have been good enough for most people to back away from the situation, but Gan is as superstitious as the next guy. He doesn’t want to offend anyone by not mentioning them and wind up plagued by bad winds and tainted water for the rest of his life. Besides, this isn’t just about fire and earth anymore, with maybe a few mentions of water tossed in for color. This isn’t just about the war.

Besides, it’s dramatic. Drama is good. Drama sticks in people’s heads and gets them to spread his music far and wide by word of mouth alone. Drama gets his warning out quickly and gives him a bigger audience. Drama will keep people alive.

He checks over his notes on what the Grandmaster had managed to convey about the current situation and cross-references them with his own lyrics sheet for the millionth time. He’s not worried about his playing. It’s a bit faster than his usual styles, true, and more aggressive than is standard, but it will certainly leave an impression. It’s the lyrics that are most important in spreading the message, and they have to be perfect..

While the Earth Rumble won’t take place for a few months still, that’s for the professional competitors. Xin Fu runs Rumble Mania, an entirely amateur league, too, in between the spring and autumn Earth Rumbles. Anyone good enough in the Mania might get added to the roster for Earth Rumbles, and that kind of fame and the possibility to face off against the Blind Bandit herself makes sure there’s no shortage of willing competitors. Rumble Mania isn’t as popular as its larger, more bombastic, more organized counterpart, but it still rakes in a pretty penny, with or without Gan’s presence. He’s just an added bonus to get more people into more seats and to get even more reckless, glory-seeking benders out on the competition floor.

Gan debuts most of his songs on this particular stage for a number of reasons. There’s not a lot of higher status people in the audience that will refuse to host him if his song doesn’t go as well as planned, Xin Fu wouldn’t kick him out even if he did play a flop, the crowd isn’t afraid to speak their minds about a piece and give him a good outside opinion, and the Blind Bandit seems to enjoy something new whenever he can play it for her.

It’s always an interesting hunt to try and find her in the crowd before his first song is done. He rarely succeeds, but he can usually find her by the time his entire set is done. She’s good at hiding, he’ll grant her that, but she’s still distinctive if someone knows who exactly they’re looking for. Every time he catches her sightless eyes, he wonders what she hears that he can’t in his music. What she imagines when he describes a scene.

“You’re on next, bard,” Xin Fu announces, coming into the room without a knock to be seen. “The competition is good, tonight. See if you can’t make it better.” He takes in the scattered papers with vague interest. “New piece, hmm? Are you still writing about that Bandit Prince of yours, or is there something juicier on the roster?”

Gan laughs shakily and hurries to pick up all of his papers in some semblance of order as he tosses them back into the back of the case. “Sort of both, really. I’ve certainly got news, and I’m sure it’ll spread word of your venue far and wide.”

Xin Fu grins a sabertooth-sharklike smile and claps his hands twice. “Always glad to do business with you, then, bard. Get ready to go up on stage. I doubt you’ll break routine and wait around after your set, so I’ll see you when the flowers bloom again.”

Gan nods and shoulders his case, preparing himself to walk out onto that stage and deliver the news of a century to people for the second time in his life. What a life he leads, singing of barren thrones and reawakened legends. He only stumbles a little as Xin Fu claps him on the shoulder on his way to the stage entrance.

“Give them Everything,” he whispers to himself, as the competitors clear the stage and his stone seat is bent out of the arena floor. The sunlight shines through the earthbent holes in the ceilings, spotlighting where he will stand as he lets the world know that the Avatar is alive.

That the Avatar is hunted.

He doesn’t look as he makes his way to his pedestal and sets down his case. He doesn’t acknowledge the roar of the crowd. He just opens one palm to the sunlight and presses the other to the stone and wordlessly prays to both constant elements for guidance.

He doesn’t get an answer, really. But he can feel the sunlight, bright and harsh and unforgiving on his skin, and the stone, cold and dark and unyielding beneath his body. He knows he is heard, even if he is unanswered. He knows that this will matter.

He takes the gheychak out of its case and raises the bow to the strings. He raises his eyes to sweep the crowd, to solidify their presence and the fact that they will hear him.

He meets the pale, unseeing eyes of the Blind Bandit before he can even begin to play. He’s never found her that quickly before.

It feels like a sign.

He tightens his grip around his bow and the words in his mind, and [he plays](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/622672073276424192/from-chapter-17-of-remember-me-when-im-reborn).

_ Do you hear? Don’t you know? _ He wants to ask as he spits out words as fast as he can think them, as his fingers rush over the strings and the notes scream loose. As he warns the world that the Banished Prince has found his quarry.

He hopes that this Everything will be enough.

-

As is routine, after his entire set is through and the crowd is left shaken in his wake, he leaves as quickly as he can find his payment and sling his case over his shoulder.

As is routine, the Blind Bandit finds him within five blocks of the venue.

As is routine, she doesn’t say anything at first, hand latched onto his wrist. He knows the question she always wants to ask, though. _ Is it true. _

As is routine, she finds some way to answer her own question without a single word passing between them.

As isn’t routine, though, she lets go, crosses her arms, and announces, “Fuck.”

Gan winces. “Crude, but accurate.”

She manages to find his eyes accurately enough to glare at him. “I’ll be as crude as I want, music man.” She shifts her weight on one leg and a pebble flies up to ding off of the latch of his case at the same time as she raps his lowest rib with her knuckle. “You’ll want to head out by the desert way. There are Nation sympathizers in the southern quarter. They won’t be happy once they hear what you had to sing.”

Gan winces again. “Thanks for the warning.”

Another pebble flies up, tapping one of the leather bracers over his scarred forearms as she gives the sort of mocking sneer that only an eleven year old can pull off. Oh, to be young and senselessly agitated again. “I liked the song from the last Rumble better, but this one is catchier.” She compliments him with the same tone anyone else would use to heckle him. It’s almost remarkable how her praise can sound like a complaint. “I want another song about the Princess for the next Rumble.”

His own burn scars itch in sympathy as he remembers that specific subject. “I could just sing the Ballad of Kyoshi- ah!” The cobblestones of the road leap up his shins as soon as he says the name of the song that she has specifically forbidden him from playing.

“Do it, and I will destroy you.” 

“Understood,” Gan responds immediately, and relaxes as the cobbles flow cleanly off of his legs and back down onto the road as if they were never disturbed in the first place.

The Blind Bandit tosses her head down the road and makes an impatient gesture. “Well? Get going before anyone else can catch you, idiot.”

Gan doesn’t waste time arguing with her. It’s like arguing with a force of nature.

He does note, however, as he walks back toward where his ostrich-horse is stabled, that she hums part of his new song as she makes her way back to the arena.

-

The fog seems thicker and worse now that the sun has gone down and the village is dark.

No one is in their houses, so there are no candlelit windows to cut through the mist and give some respite from the eerie, accusing darkness. The civilian population is still in the dining hall, guarded and waiting for the all-clear from the Warriors investigating the strange singing, joined by the Avatar and his friends.

It’s wordless singing, just notes into the open air, aggressive and long and loud, interspersed with chanting. It wouldn’t be much to remark on if every seat at the dining hall hadn’t been filled and everyone in the village present. Mysterious singing from the mist generally can be excused as something suspicious but probably normal, but it’s very much not good when it happens on an isolated, guarded island with everyone accounted for in one location.

Another round of chanting starts up, guiding the group of Kyoshi Warriors, Aang, Katara, and Sokka further down through the village, down the central path. Momo, clinging to Katara’s neck, chitters nervously. Aang has his staff out and ready, Katara has the cork on her water flask popped, and Sokka and the Kyoshi Warriors all have their fans open and held at careful angles, except for the two holding torches to light some of the way through the haze.

A shadow scythes through the mist before them, a shapeless blur ghosting past them. Momo screams. One of the Kyoshi Warriors nearly drops her fans.

“Stay together,” Suki snarls, low and dangerous. “Protect each other.”

The chanting ends, but the singing doesn’t start up again afterward, leaving them locked in a tight cluster in the dark fog, surrounded only by silence. The torches flicker in the humid cold, casting strange enough shadows without whatever silhouette is hunting them.

One of the torchbearers steps forward, flanked by two other Warriors, lighting the way through the mist determinedly. Her steps are cautious as she guides them down the slope of the village and toward where the chanting was guiding them.

Katara stiffens next to Aang. “The mist is talking, again,” she whispers. “I don’t- I can’t understand it. I don’t think it wants me to understand it.” Panic steals any more words from her.

_ Stop, _ the mist whispers as it swirls around them.

_ Too late, _ the fog snickers.

“Stop!” Katara yells, too late.

The torch goes out.

The torchbearer and her companions disappear in the space of one moment to the next. They are there, torch held high and silhouettes strong, and then their shadows and cast light are nowhere to be seen.

Someone- multiple someone’s maybe, cry out in horror. A Warrior rushes forward toward where her comrades disappeared and falls prey to the same effect. Everyone clusters beneath the only circle of torchlight remaining, too afraid to follow where four people have fallen.

Aang’s fingers are numb on his staff. He doesn’t know what this is. Every sign points toward something of Spirit origin but _ he doesn’t know what this is. _ He was never given the training to deal with this. He’s the Avatar. He’s supposed to know how to fix this, _ he’s supposed to know how to fix this. _

And he doesn’t even know where to start.

“Hold group formation!” Suki commands. Her hands shake subtly in their iron grip on her fans. “Move forward. _ Slowly.” _

The remaining torchbearer keeps a tight grip on the light as they inch through the fog. The light wavers even more the more they press on.

As they reach the spot everyone disappeared, Suki orders another stop and goes to investigate the thin chasm in the earth that ate some of her best soldiers. She gouges a stone out from the earth and tosses it onto the solid ground just beyond the chasm-

The earth breaks. It’s nothing more than a thin veneer over a larger pit.

Suki gestures for the light and holds it over the pit. Ten feet below, far enough to injure but not kill unless someone is spectacularly unlucky, all four of her Lieutenants lay, stunned or unconscious.

“Shit,” Suki hisses. “Get to the rooftops. This is either an earthbender or an earth Spirit.” She flicks her fans closed and stuffs them in her belt, clambering up onto the nearest wooden house in seconds flat. Her war paint glows white against the darkness.

The Kyoshi Warriors follow suit easily, obviously practiced in these sorts of drills, while the Avatar and his friends take longer to react.

Long enough, in fact, for a blast of flame to carve through the mist, burning it apart and scything a clear path through the murky darkness.

Katara jumps back immediately, face white, and Sokka doesn’t hesitate to grab her, instincts overriding everything else, and pull her away to safety on the wooden stoop of a house.

Aang swallows hard and raises his staff. He doesn’t know how to do this. He never had the chance to be taught how to do this. He doesn’t know what he’s dealing with. But he doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt because of him. He’s the Avatar. He’s supposed to be better than this.

Another burst of flame cuts through the mist and clears it entirely in a thin column between Aang and where the singing came from. The night sky glitters with stars, partially blacked out by the tall shadow of the punishment pole and the wooden figure of Avatar Kyoshi placed on top.

A yellow star glows against the night, bright and curious.

Aang tightens his grip on his staff to stop his hands from trembling and sets his stance. “Where are you?” He asks, and hates the fact that his voice is high and undeniably a child’s. “Why are you here? What do you want from Kyoshi Island?”

A dry chuckle seeps through the mist, rough and coarse, like dragging claws against marble, like splintering wood and crackling flames. It too, is high, but there is something that rumbles beneath it.

And the yellow star _ blinks. _

“What else?” a voice says, coming from all around and right in front of him, as the yellow star rises up with another silhouette, blotting out the night sky behind it. Light spreads over it in tiny cracks, a thousand colors burning through the night and cracking open a void in the sky. 

One quick, shadowed motion from the silhouette, and flame ignites to life, brighter than it has any right to be, steady and stable against the night chill and fog.

There is something standing on the very top of the punishment pole, a good thirty feet off of the ground, perched atop Avatar Kyoshi’s unmoving, wooden face. It has dark hair pulled partially back into a ponytail and it wears a coat that falls to its knees in traditional Fire Nation colors. Its right eye glows a strange, liquid gold that seems to burn through the night more that the flame casually cradled in its hand.

Its left eye is shrouded with a piece of fabric with every element’s color embroidered through it, and it glows gold from within as cracks spiral out on the skin beneath, across to the other side of the face and down the neck. When it tilts its head like a curious bird, the cracks flare a million colors and spread even further, like the sheer calculated, curious loathing in its gaze is breaking apart its skin like an eggshell.

It hops off of the tallest point of the statue and lands in a crouch that looks more like a creature about to pounce than the winded, possible broken-legged experience anyone else should get from falling from that height and landing feet first. Aang has only ever seen airbenders fall that far and still shake it off, before.

When it stands up, it is something deliberate and serpentine, smooth and slow and calculated, like the chameleon-snakes that would move through the trees of the Eastern Air Temple hunting birds. Small, incremental movements that should not be as smooth as they are, that creep up on its quarry with almost innocent stillness, resulting with prey dead all the same.

“Hello, Avatar,” says the boy that Suki warned them about. Says a creature that doesn’t smile and doesn’t snarl but shows razor sharp teeth all the same. Says a prince with flames in his hand and an unheeded warning in his eye.

The mist snaps shut like jaws rather than water vapor, demolishing the night sky and clamping around Aang like a thin, ghostly vise. The prince’s fire, still searingly bright even through the fog, flares out wide before disappearing altogether, leaving Aang in the dark, entirely alone.

For the last moment before the flame faded out of existence, however, Aang would swear it looked like wings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ::::::::::::))))))))))))))
> 
> Zuko may not know what the hell he's doing, but he knows two things: he wants to freak somebody out, and he wants to be the biggest drama queen possible. He can't escape being a theater kid.
> 
> Rookie joins Aang in the unreliable narrator club.
> 
> Hey! Hey!  
Fanart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  
Unprompted, the absolutely wonderful bananahomo made [this lovely piece of Zuko](https://bananahomo.tumblr.com/post/621944249371574272/some-fanart-for-the-absolutely-wonderful-work-no) that makes me feel bubbly inside every time I see it! Give him some love!
> 
> Gan's Song link on [Tumblr](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/622672073276424192/from-chapter-17-of-remember-me-when-im-reborn)  
On [Soundcloud](https://soundcloud.com/evt-aspire/hunt)  
On [Youtube](https://youtu.be/pT2dcbIyKLw)  
Album on [Bandcamp](https://zenza.bandcamp.com/album/no-grave-hold-my-body-songs)


	18. Chapter 18

The mist doesn’t seem to care about how much wind he bends at it. It sticks to his skin like it wants to suffocate him and keeps him stumbling and afraid of the ground beneath his feet. It only ever clears enough for him to catch the edges of a shadow circling him and flashes of fire licking near him before clamping back down to smother him and leave him blind and desperate. The muted footsteps that circle him and seem to come from every direction seem to have no problem orienting themselves.

Aang can’t help but shy away from the thin snake of fire that slithers through the mist to his left. He can’t help that he stumbles back. He’s of the Southern Temple, and they follow the natural path of least resistance, whether it be forward or away. Right now, he can keep that _ thing _distracted, but only if he is the leaf on the wind, spiraling away from threats.

“Even now, are you still trying to run away from your problems?” The voice of the prince is cold and young and burnt and it scrapes against Aang’s ears with hissing accusation and deep malice. “Did a hundred years teach you nothing, Avatar?”

Aang shakes his head, bringing his staff closer to his body and turning to where the voice seems to come from. “No,” he denies, as he prays to Lì in his dozenth attempt to clear the clinging mist just enough for him to see. “I- I’m here to protect these people. I’m not going to let you hurt them.”

The fog stops swirling, and the echoing footsteps cease for one moment. Then the laugh comes, scraping against the sky and coming from everywhere. There is nothing humorous about it, though. There is nothing but venom and bitterness in that sound.

_ “Protect them _ , Avatar? Really? From who? Yourself?” That laugh sounds again, jumping from one ear to the other back and forth as another flare skirts its way around his right side. “Be my guest, _ Avatar. _ Protect your people. See how long it takes before you drown them for the sake of _ protection.” _

The shadow slinks around him again, made bizarre and strangely twisted with the firelight serpents scything through the fog hungrily. Aang tightens his grip on his staff and gets ready to swing if necessary, muttering a wordless prayer with the set of his shoulderblades to Tíngzhǐ to set the air around him to stillness. Fear crawls over his scalp and sends his arms trembling. “I’m protecting them from you,” Aang says, hating the quaver in his voice. “You’re the one trespassing here.”

Another laugh, a breathless, scorched, humorless bark of laughter. “And did you get a signed invitation to this island then, Avatar? Did you consult with the Spirit guarding here? Did you ever even think to ask for permission from the Unagi, or did you just come here, expecting welcome? Which one of us trespassed first?”

Aang doesn’t have a response to that. He should, he knows. He could justify it a thousand different ways but he knows they would all fall flat off of his tongue. It was a choice he made, and now the whole island could suffer for it. He doesn’t have a defense for that. He does know that his wrong does not make his adversary’s own violation right.

He feels trapped. Backed into a corner. Desperate. Certain of only a few things but ready to cast those aside if it means survival.

He feels hunted.

-

Sokka stares as the fire flashes within the fog and disappears completely, blocking off all view of Aang and whatever spoke with the roll of thunder and moved like a predator. There’s no visibility. There’s no blood, bright red against fresh snow, only the faint scent of old iron in the air, thick and metallic and rotted through. There’s nothing for him to chase down and take out and drag back to the village for the week’s dinner.

It is, he finds, an increasingly likely possibility that he is the prey in this case. It’s not something that settles well with the wolf howling in his chest.

He keeps a solid grip on his fans. He keeps himself in front of his sister. He keeps his breathing steady even as the thrumming panic settles into his blood. He keeps his footing stable on the wooden porch and his eyes scanning the ground for any trembles that could spell doom. He keeps himself vigilant, because that is all he can do right now.

Suki thumps onto the porch next to him, painted face somehow still pale with panic as she also looks helplessly out at the dark mist, towards where her lieutenants are trapped and where her nightmare lies in wait. She keeps her body faced towards the more imminent threat and turns only her head to regard him. “You need to go. Now. As quickly as possible. We have no deniability now.” She flicks the fan in her right hand closed and then open again nervously. “You got what you came for. You might have damned us in the process, but I can guarantee that the whole world will know where you’re going. Now you have to _ go.” _

Sokka nods, bares his neck a little, and shoves the blame into a dark corner to deal with later, once the immediacy of the current threat is dealt with. “I didn’t want this. I’m sorry.”

He doesn’t know where Appa is, though. He’s been too busy training with Suki to join Katara and Aang in their animal grooming. And right now, there might be pit traps all around them ready to trip him up the second he even _ tries _ to find their ride out of here, and he doesn’t have nearly enough projectiles available to feel out a clear path.

Luckily, he knows exactly who can help. Unluckily, she is probably reliving the day their mother died, if he knows anything about how she reacts whenever she feels afraid.

He paces back a few steps, refusing to turn his back on the fog, the low murmur of that horribly young, terribly inhuman voice and the whistle of wind and fire. “Katara?” he asks, nudging his wrist against hers to take her out of the white-faced terror she usually gets when faced with fire. “Katara, can you find out a path and take us to Appa?”

Katara takes in a shaking inhale and raises her hands to her ears to block out whatever the mist is screaming to her. She nods, twice, each one weak and stuttering but certain. She has always been good at following familiar paths by just the light of the moon and the weight of the mist, like a water droplet carving grooves into solid stone. She can lead the way to salvation, so long as he can keep her safe. That’s how it’s always been, but it’s never seemed as immediate as now.

“Alright,” Sokka says, leaning one shoulder against Katara in a silent warding away of the night’s chill and the memory of red blood boiling against the snow briefly before separating and letting her bend the water out of her flask and feel out the solid ground from the pits around them.

-

The two senior crewmen from the _ Siren _squint out at the thin shadows in the night and in the fog.

“They probably shouldn’t be on those roofs, huh?” one with an admittedly impressive mustache says to his stubble-faced counterpart.

Stubble shrugs. “Well, everybody’s supposed to be in a pit, so probably not. Guess we get the exciting job of spurring them off of there, huh?”

Mustache sighs and rolls his wrists as he settles into a firebending stance. “I bet you I can knock more off of there than you.”

Stubble snorts. “Oh, you’re on. Terms?”

“You do my laundry for the next week if I win. If you win, I do yours. Deal?”

“Deal. Now pick a house and keep track of your points. I’ll know if you cheat.”

-

He joins Suki on the front of the porch to give Katara space. She’s halfway watching him and halfway watching the periodic shadows and flashes within the mist. She looks frightened and angry and tense and hunted and predatory and so, so beautiful with the hesitant, horrible promise of bloodshed lain out before her, standing as a grim, pale-faced shadow against the night and against the hell he has brought to her home.

He steels himself and snaps his fans closed, fighting against every instinct that tells him to keep his weapons ready, and holds them out to her. “I probably don’t deserve these,” he starts, already hating the time crawling away from him and the protections he is giving away but knowing, somewhere deep in his bones, that this is what he’s supposed to do. “You did your best to teach me what it means to be one of yours, and I’m thankful for that, but I doubt you’d want someone that brought- _ that _ to your island carrying a part of your culture around.”

Suki twists her wrists as she snaps her own fans closed, shoving them into thin holsters on her wrist guards. Her gloved hands hover over his own loaned fans like a flock of vulture-ravens, ready to prophesy death. There is something unreadable in her eyes.

She pushes his fans back against his chest. Her hands do not shake, even though her shoulders tremble. “No,” she says, and the rest of the words rush out of her, hissed against the quiet chaos of the night. “I don’t know what’s going to happen once all of you leave here. We’ve lost enough to this fucking war, and we’ve lost enough to our isolation, and if we all die here, today, then I refuse to let us go down without a single word.” 

Like the airbenders did, she doesn’t have to say. Like the Southern waterbenders did, she doesn’t have to say. He knows what she means. He’s planning on catching a ride out of here with the two best examples of what she means.

She glares at him, eyes flinty and cold and so very afraid. She yanks out the small compact of war paint from her arm guards and shoves it against his chest as well. “You make it off of this island, you don’t look back, you find someone that needs Kyoshi’s strength, and you give them what you learned from me. You don’t get to ruin us and leave with just the guilt. Your friends are already carrying a culture on their spines. Now’s your turn to join the club.”

And, well. That’s fair. It makes a weight sink in his stomach, but that’s probably what he deserves, what they deserve, for bringing whatever creature is out there in the fog onto this island. It’s no different than the burden his dad left him. It’s just another thing left on his conscience. It’s the least he can do, really.

But she says it with a fervor, a violence, an anger, a protective snarl that makes Sokka’s heart skip a beat again. She is painted in the white of snow and the red of blood and the black of ash, and she talks of death and legacy, and it makes the wolf howling in his chest yearn.

“I understand,” Sokka says, and his lips are numb, and there is the hunted panic of prey in his veins still, and Katara is finishing feeling out a path into the forest, and there’s no time, and- and he just sort of says it. “I’m pretty sure I love you, by the way.”

Suki opens her mouth to respond and freezes, jaw working around only silence. 

Then, she takes in a deep breath, lunges forward, and kisses him.

He doesn’t have any other kisses to compare it to, but in Sokka’s limited experience, Suki is a damn good kisser. Aggressive, yeah, but Sokka cannot overstate how much that is not a problem for him. He has seen animals kill each other with more mercy than she gives him, and it is absolutely perfect.

She pulls back, and her war paint is almost infuriatingly, somehow, perfect, unsmudged and unbroken. “Sokka,” she says, with some of his red makeup showing on her canines, “get the hell off of my island.”

“Right away,” Sokka says immediately, shoving the compact and one of the fans into his own arm guards and snapping open his remaining weapon. Katara flows the water back into her flask, having felt out their path into the woods, and nods at him, hands still clamped firmly over her ears.

Before they can even take their first steps onto the clear path, a blast of fire leaps out from beyond the village and streaks over the top of the house to their left. One of the Kyoshi Warriors clustered at the top makes an involuntary noise of terror, dodging the sudden flare and nearly toppling off of the roof. Another flare bursts against an adjacent rooftop, scaring a Warrior off of her perch and onto a trick section of the ground that crumbles under her. Katara stiffens by his side and her hands fall from blocking her ears to guarding her chest.

“Shit,” Suki hisses. “Firebenders. Run.”

Sokka doesn’t hesitate to follow her orders, grabbing Katara by the wrist and loping out into the woods in what he hopes is the right direction. He doesn’t wait around as Suki climbs back up onto the roof and orders her Warriors to keep their weapons to themselves and their feet light.

His war paint is definitely smudged, though, and if he weren’t afraid for his own life and in a very serious situation, he’d probably be smiling.

-

A deep, thrumming sound echoes through the air around him. Like growling, or humming, or perhaps even purring. A thick smell seeps through the mist, too, smelling like rust and rot and death, heavy and strong. “A century gone. A hundred years of death that you were made to stop, and you sat back and did _ nothing. _ You’ve barely been awake for a week and you already have blood on your hands.”

Aang would freeze if there wasn’t already terror coursing like ice water through his veins. “What? No, I- I want peace.”

“Sixteen thrown in the ocean. Thirty-nine frozen in ice.” The voice twists around him, even though the fractured shadows remain stationary. “You didn’t even bother to count them before you tried to kill them. Firebenders don’t do well in the cold, did you know that? The earthbenders on the crew don’t do well in the ocean, either, and they don’t have an inner flame to keep themselves warm. Neither do the nonbenders. Fifty-five soldiers trapped where the cold is meant to kill them. Over forty of them never raised a finger against you before they were doomed.”

Aang barely catches his staff before it slips out of his fingers. He knew that he did damage. He knew that he had hurt people. He didn’t know the scale, though. Everything is hazy, nothing is certain, from almost the second Appa had set off into the air. The Avatar State claws at his memories, takes them and reduces them to tatters of their former selves and steals them off into a dark, coveted corner.

Fifty-five.

Fēng above, that’s so many. That’s too many. It’s less than the horror his sect and every other had faced in their total annihilation, but it is fifty-five people, who lived and breathed. Fifty-five people that he kil-

“I had to protect them. From _ you, _ Avatar. And if it were anyone else other than me, they would all be dead. Every last one of them. More, most likely, in the time it would’ve taken my ship to limp back to port without proper supplies. You can talk of protection all you’d like, but _ I know, _ Avatar, that you nearly killed fifty-five children of the Nation in less than a quarter of an hour.”

Before he can react, the shadow lunges forward and presses its hands against his chest, pushing him, stumbling, away.

The handprints left behind on his robes are dark and shiny, and smell of that syrupy, rusted rot that hangs heavy in the air.

The ground beneath his feet crumbles.

-

“Put that fan the fuck down, or I will maul you myself,” Suki hisses to one of her lieutenants, whose eyes are blown wide with fear and whose fan is held in a throwing grip. “We are not going to mess with any of the Bandit Prince’s men, got that?”

Another flare pushes overhead and Suki pulls one of her girls down with her to the rooftop as the second follows just under the first, nearly scorching her headdress. 

It had taken her a while to shake off the initial panic of her out-of-commission lieutenants, the arrival of the person she’s been hoping she’d never see again, and the fire blasts occasionally scaring her people off of their perches, but once she did, she noticed that nothing being wielded against them was meant to be lethal. They aren’t the targets of this. They can get out of here alive and unharmed if they don’t do anything stupid. She is, however, aware of how quickly that could change if they aren’t careful.

Below, the ground rumbles slightly and another ravine opens up without a trick covering over it, snaking between the houses and into the unnaturally thick mist. They’re being warded off from joining the confrontation between the Avatar and the Prince, not like Suki was ever planning on getting even remotely close to that mess. 

She would admire the tactics used to herd them into easily controllable or disabling positions if they weren’t being used against her.

-

Zuko bears his teeth in either a smile or a snarl as he watches his prey stumble back. Watches, as much as he can with the fog this thick. He can sense the heat of his quarry though, another sense pressing against his mind as he tries his best to press his way out of his own skull.

The old blood from the Unagi’s kills still, despite his best efforts to clean it from himself without diving into the ocean, remained on his inner tunic. It was very easy to unfasten his coat and slick his hands in the blackened mess before making his point.

It’s gloriously poetic, in a way that he doesn’t have the capacity to even properly appreciate, with the whole of him dedicated to the _ blood-in-water-stolen-hoard _sensation of the hunt. 

The quarry bends his way out of the pit that he would have been perfectly cornered in, otherwise. Every time the prey airbends, he flickers just slightly out of the Zuko’s sense for body heat, as the wind confuses direction and dispersal. Now, though, the Avatar is marked with two bloody handprints on his monk’s robes, and the scent of iron slicks the air thickly. There is no possibility to hide, now, not with blood marking the prey as sure as the sun lies beneath his feet.

Zuko rests easier now, knowing that he can no longer mistake the heat of his prey for the heat of Rookie, safely hidden in the fog where no one else can find him and hurt him, like last time. It’s a small price to pay to have the gummy, slick sensation of rotten fish blood on his hands.

“You tried to kill the earthbender that made these traps, by the way. He’s nineteen.” Zuko carefully sidesteps around where he knows the edge of the pit to be and pursues as the Avatar circles in frightened, fluttering motions, uncertain whether to break free or remain within, like a butterfly-mouse caught in a cage. “He almost drowned. Are you proud of your accomplishments?”

He’s done his work. He’s cornered, isolated, and identified the Avatar to the best of his abilities. He’s given his reasonings and he’s begun his lessons. He’s done what he has to to keep himself in check and focused, when the chips are down and he presses on the cracks in his being and does his damnedest to break his way free of his own skin. He’s made his precautions and discussed why he’s delivering this terror and punishment.

And now, he only needs to break free.

-

“Don’t you even dare,” Suki calls across to where she can see yet another one of her trigger-happy lieutenants on top of a nearby house, scanning the fog and holding her fan ready to attack the first shadow she sees. “I will put you on fishing duty if you even _ think _about escalating this situation.”

The girl she pushed down next to her huffs out something that, on a better day, might have been a bleak laugh. “All due respect, Captain, but this situation seems pretty damn escalated.”

Suki punches the girl’s shoulder lightly and takes score of how many of her people are still on the rooftops she can see and how many are missing and probably in a pit somewhere. “They aren’t trying to kill us yet, lieutenant. I’d rather not make them want to. Duck.”

They hit the deck again as another volley passes overhead. Again, aimed just enough to spread a little bit of panic and unbalance them off of the rooftops if they’re unlucky. The part of her that swallowed scrolls on military tactics the second she learned how to read politely claps, and the part of her that is responsible for the wellbeing of all of the Kyoshi Warriors and the protection of Kyoshi Island is screaming as loudly and angrily as it can.

-

Rookie holds his position mostly, as he carves the earth into chunks and breaks the stones to his will. It is exhilarating in a way that nothing in his memory has ever been. It’s like he’s never breathed before, and is only now taking in his first, gasping inhale.

It is beautiful, this restructuring and destruction and creation he wreaks over this fog-swept landscape, far past what his fallible eyes can see and deep where the bones of creatures lay buried and the roots of trees find their final destination.

He finds himself straying, however, from the center of the supernaturally thick fog, from where every animal instinct he hasn’t had drilled free of him tells him that there is something there with sharpened teeth and malice. From where the wind whistles and kicks up dust and fire bakes the earth into a thin crust. That is danger. The outskirts are safer, where he is surrounded by ravines of his own making, gouged within his element. He has control there.

Control, as he presses open a new veinwork of trenches across the surface of this island. As he carves imaginary life into the silent earth and it listens to him.

He likes this. There is no ‘because’ or ‘otherwise’ he needs to tack on to convince himself it's the truth. It just is.

-

“I swear on the Unagi, put your fans down before I tear them out of your hands!” she has to yell at another one of her lieutenants on the house to her right, who should probably be more worried that one of her headdress tassels is smoldering lightly.

It’s like herding parakeet-cats. Except everything is on fire.

If they get out of here alive, which seems like a much more likely scenario now, even if there are technically more active threats, she is going to make them run drills until their war paint bleeds.

-

“You say you only mean to protect, Avatar? You say you want peace?” Zuko tosses out a haphazard, irreverent message to La and the mist swirls all the more aggressively around the both of them. “Then you’re just like I was. Do you know the terror you caused? I do. I can teach it to you.”

The cloth over the left side of his face is thick with moisture and clings to his face uncomfortably, but he does not remove it. He only presses back his shoulderblades and flexes his fingers, reminding himself of the weight of the Agni Kai ring on his arm, of the long-healed scar tissue on his spine and the brand spread over his face, of the teeth sharp in his mouth.

“Let’s change roles, then, from last time. This time, I’ll play the monster.” The fire swirls around his skin, laughing and snarling and howling and _ hungry. _ “And you can try to save what you have left to care about. Put your hundred years of practice to work. _ Run.” _

And then he lets go of the careful reins and lets himself drop back and surge forward simultaneously, reckless and breathless and ready.

And the Traitor, the Bandit, the Wyrm, the Prince, growls, and stops playing with its meal.

-

Sokka feels the weight of distant malice settle on his shoulderblades just as he and Katara burst into the clearing. Even as he gives Katara a boost onto Appa’s back, he’s fighting the urge to drop her and turn to confront the threat.

“Don’t you dare,” Katara hisses, scrambling up onto Appa’s saddle with her hands still shaking and shoulders trembling, moving as quickly as she can to get up while she keeps her hands clamped over her ears. “You are not going to go deal with that right now.”

“I am not going to go dealing with that right now,” Sokka mutters to himself, shaking off the initial instinct to turn around and ward off whatever predator lies behind them and throwing himself up onto Appa’s saddle as well, where all of their bags remain packed and firmly secured for what was meant to be a much more theatrical and less serious exit from the island.

Katara scans the saddle and does the frantic, lunging dance of someone trying to find a vital thing that might be trapped under their own body. “Where’s the reins?”

Sokka snatches the thin leather harness from where it’s draped just between Appa’s neck and saddle and presents it to Katara. “Ta-da! Appa, yip-yip.”

Katara rolls her eyes and unthinkingly removes one of her hands from her ears to snatch the reins from his hands, just like she has a thousand other times when he was holding her things or a particularly disgusting fish.

Katara drops the reins the second she has them in hand, though, as Appa rises into the air, and Sokka has to pull them from her limp grasp to steer the sky bison back to where they left Aang, much to Appa’s grumbling discomfort.

“Sokka,” Katara says, hands dropping entirely from her ears to hold onto the edge of the saddle with white knuckles. “Sokka, the fog is laughing.”

-

Suki physically feels it when the air shifts. When the scent of arctic summer mist and faint blood give way to a wave of ash and cinders and smoke. When the hair on the back of her neck stands up and she instinctively ducks to keep her throat protected.

She can hear the fear of her lieutenants, hear the heightened pace of their breathing, hear the shifting of their fans as they, too, register the threat. She can see the fear in the eyes of the girl closest to her, whose grip on her fan shakes and whose eyes are wide and helpless and darting in search of the threat that presses against them all.

“Stay calm,” Suki says, even though the words are ash on her tongue. “Don’t do anything stupid-”

-

Rookie takes in a harsh breath and scrambles backward as the earth shifts under his feet and the growl cuts through the mist and the mist smells less like moist dirt and more like the smoke from a funeral pyre-

-

“I said, stay-”

-

The mist burns away as the _ thing _ steps forward calmly, carefully, cracks spiralling every inch of exposed skin in a million burning, shifting colors that hurt to even look at.

Aang takes a step back, instinctively, and nearly tumbles back into the pit.

_ Run, _ the creature had said, right before the world hazed and fractured and burnt apart. _ Run, _ it had said, and it seems like an impossibility and the only option all at once. He is rooted to the ground with every single part of his body screaming at him to _ move move move get away get away run- _

-

Rookie moves, unthinkingly, away and away and to the edge of the mist-

-

“Don’t!-”

-

The creature lunges forward-

-

Suki watches as the fan leaves the hand of her lieutenant, helpless to stop its trajectory as it flies, unerringly, toward the shadow on the edge of thick fog-

-

A choked, hurt, instinctive yelp echoes through the mist like cannonshot-

-

It stops, mere breaths away, bloodied hands poised like claws, frozen in a single moment as the fire wreathing it like chains and finery sputters weakly into nothingness. Its single visible eye is wide and glowing gold, looking not at Aang, but beyond him.

It hisses, low and predatory and terrifying, and shoves Aang to the side as it stalks forward, casting him aside unthinkingly and uncaringly, like a broken toy.

And then-

-

Rookie hunches on the ground, hunkering down behind a hastily raised barrier of earth while he presses one hand to the long cut across his cheek and the other over his mouth, as if he can force the sound back into his throat.

He broke the rule the Prince gave him.

He screamed.

He doesn’t have to wait long to see the consequences, as the smell of ash rises to a sharp, nauseating, peak-

-

The sensation of _ predator _spreads, and Suki realizes she’s only been feeling the echoes of some greater, atavistic fear, like the difference between being brushed up against by a lion-puma and being face to face with the Unagi’s teeth-

-

The fog burns away in seconds.

(Hoard hurt, hoard bleeding, iron in the air, iron on his hands, blood on the golden fan in the dirt, blood on the hoard that trembles before him, golden fans in the hands of the people with the painted faces atop the roofs)

The rest of the firestorm that follows?

Well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tosses on sunglasses* well, somebody done fucked up.
> 
> All of your comments feed me immensely. Thank you so much for leaving them.
> 
> Uh oh! While trying to piece together which POVs went where and crying, I made [another song](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/623674793476210688/yall-are-enablers-heres-another-song-this-one)! It's basically what would happen if I mashed up my first two songs in that it's about love, death, the fire nation, and light treason. I don't have plans for this one to show up in universe, but it was a good exercise for removing stress. I accidentally made it instead of making any progress on an Azula song. Oops. Hope you enjoy it!   
Edit: It's also on the album on [Bandcamp](https://zenza.bandcamp.com/album/no-grave-hold-my-body-songs).
> 
> EDIT: also! krchov made beautiful, horrible, lovely [fanart](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/622836938257367040/i-had-a-convo-with-zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa-about-zuko-in) in which Zuko has an earthdended, shitty, uncomfortably and disturbingly muscular statue a la Mothman. I have many complex emotions about it.


	19. Chapter 19

Iroh sets his Pai Sho set aside very neatly as to not drop it as the distant blob of a sky bison rises into the sky and an entirely different region of the island abruptly blazes into a twisting, writhing column of fire.

His opponent does nothing to stop him as he picks up the teapot and pours both of their cups fresh, before taking both and downing them at the same time. Perhaps because his opponent is too busy staring, open-mouthed, at this sudden beacon lighting up the night sky.

“Crewman,” Iroh says, gravely, emptying out the pot entirely into his cup and slugging it all back, “there is not a pot of tea big enough to soothe the headache my nephew gives me. Do this old man a kindness, and tell the Captain to take us in.”

His opponent, one of the charming new additions to the crew, with a fantastically outdated helmet and a proclivity for talking down other soldiers through flashbacks, makes a vague squeaking noise and waves a hand toward the spiraling, wriggling, nearly sentient pillar of flame as if to say  _ take us in to that? That? Are you out of your mind, respectfully? _

Iroh sighs, straightens his spine, and raises his neck to the tall, commanding angle that he has had to drill out of himself otherwise. “Crewman,” the Dragon of the West orders, as the candlelight they are playing by flares into its own twisting spire, “do this old general a service, and inform the Captain we will be docking on the island.”

-

Appa sets down a little to the left of where the thickly stitched column of fire blots out the stars, and Sokka is off of the saddle as soon as the sky bison’s legs brush the ground.

“Aang, come on!” he shouts, skidding forward and grabbing onto the Avatar’s arm where he stands, unmoving and staring at the fire. “We need to get out of here!”

Aang shakes his head in tiny motions that get gradually bigger as his shoulders start to shake and his wrists start to tremble under Sokka’s grasp. There are two dark handprints stained on the front of his robes, dried already by the heat of the fire. “No,” he says, a fresh, horrible dread slicking his high voice with the sort of emotion no child should ever feel. “No, Sokka, I- I can’t do this again, I can’t just run away and let them- let them burn- I- There has to be  _ something _ I can do!”

Sokka grips his wrist firmer and tugs him backward. “There won’t be anything you can do if you  _ die _ here, Aang.” He was just barely old enough to watch the last few waterbenders of his Tribe die in the name of duty. He’s not going to let a kid younger than Katara do the same thing. “There’s a whole world relying on you. If you go down here, everyone loses. You  _ have  _ to survive. Come on.”

Aang looks a hair away from breaking down entirely, pupils shrunk to tiny dots and irises reflecting the shifting chaos of the fire before them and the raw hurt that’s just begging to scream out of him.  _ “I can’t do this again,”  _ Aang pleads, maybe to Sokka, maybe to the universe, maybe to himself. “I can’t just keep repeating mistakes and hoping that  _ someday  _ I’ll make up for them. I have to help them and I- I don’t know how and-” His tattoos start to glimmer at the edges with bluish-white light that makes a steady crawl of further dread work its way down Sokka’s scalp.

Sokka uses his grip on Aang’s wrist to spin him around and pull him into the tightest hug he can give as Aang shakes apart before him. “Suki told us to leave the second anything like this happened. She told me to leave, right now. We have to trust in her. We just have to. She knows what she can do better than we do. We have to trust she can take her people out of this safely.” Sokka slowly takes a few shuffling, backward steps, with Aang’s hands clenched in Sokka’s battle robes and his tears staining the armored vest, moving incrementally away from the blaze and towards Appa.

Aang gives a muffled, horribly wretched sob into Sokka’s loaned robes. “I can’t, I can’t,” he repeats, so small and fragile and broken in Sokka’s arms. Sokka wonders if this is what dad felt like, all those years ago, with his home smelling of burnt flesh and a hole where the most important person in his life should’ve been and a shaking, crying child in his grip. “I’m the Avatar,” Aang whispers hoarsely into Sokka’s collar, “I should be able to save them. I should have the power. I should have the control.”

“If you go full Avatar right now, there’s no guarantee it’ll fix anything,” Sokka says gently, pulling Aang back with him even further, almost close enough to touch Appa. “It might make things a hell of a lot worse. It probably will make things a hell of a lot worse. It did last time. And if you go out there to save them, not going full Avatar, you might not survive. You can either repeat the mistake you made a hundred years ago, repeat the mistake you made a week ago, or make a whole new, permanent, mistake that you’ll never come back from. There aren’t any good options, Aang. I’m sorry.”

His own words taste like ash, coating the back of his throat, but maybe that’s just from the roaring flames. It’s one hell of a shitty situation they’re in. Sokka’s spent a lot of time with Gran-Gran, though, and a lot of time studying the few scrolls on military tactics his dad had brought back. He might not know what they’re up against, but he knows they probably shouldn’t be up against it. He can feel that in just the set of his jaw, in the thrumming sensation of  _ threat _ deep in his bones.

There’s already one batshit crazy, wildly powerful supernatural entity unleashed on this island. Aang can only make this situation worse and potentially die trying. Sokka has to trust that Suki will know what to do to ensure her and her people make it out of here alive. He has to trust in that, because otherwise he’s going to- well, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, because he’s not letting himself think about it. He just can’t.

It’s awkward and harrowing, pulling Aang up onto the saddle with barely any grip and trying not to let him know what’s happening. Katara helps pull him up by the collar when he gets close enough. Her eyes glow amber and reflective blue against the bonfire lit against the night and her fingers shake, but she pulls him up all the same.

“I’m sorry,” Sokka says again, as he finally gets them both onto the saddle. He means it. He really does. But he won’t let it stop him from committing to the best of the bad options he has.

He makes eye contact with Katara, who gathers the reins in her fist and casts a single, lingering, glance over the scorched and blazing town square. “Yip-yip,” she calls out, once she has taken in enough of the destruction she has helped bring to this place. Appa rises into the air with a relieved sounding groan as they leave the flames behind.

Aang makes a confused, frightened noise into Sokka’s collar and tries to pull back, weakly, trembling, terrified of what it means to both leave and to remain. Sokka keeps holding on.

Beneath them, the fire that was streaking at the rooftops changes course to fly towards them. Katara, knuckles white on the reins, steers them around the threats as they follow to the edge of the island, trying to force them to land. None of them get close enough to actually worry over.

Sokka doesn’t let go of Aang until Appa is too high in the sky and too far from the destruction for Aang to do something stupid, and only then lets his grip slip. Aang immediately stumbles on his knees over to the edge of the saddle to stare over the side at what fresh horror they’ve left in their wake this time.

“I’m sorry,” Sokka says again. It tastes like ash on his tongue, too, and this time he knows for certain it’s not because of the writhing pillar of flame they leave behind.

-

Rookie would, if anyone if listening, very much like to know what in Koh’s Lair is happening.

Right now, the Prince (Rookie assumes it’s the Prince, even though the last few times he’s seen the royal teenager, he hasn’t had glowing cracks all over his face) is standing between him and a row of houses, controlling a massive, writhing latticework of fire that act as both a protection against the island militia and a weapon against them, as different threads of the lattice peel away and slither through the air in hunt of fresh prey. Some of the fire wreathes the Prince’s shoulders like a mantle, or a pair of wings. From the angle that Rookie, still sprawled on the ground, can see him, he seems intimidatingly tall.

It is completely and utterly terrifying. It is also, somehow, someway, sort of comforting. He does not have the time or brainpower to analyze why.

The Avatar is no longer on the scene, having been outside of the fire column at its creation. If it’s smart at all, then it’s already off of the island. It’s nice to not have two highly volatile entities in close proximity. It’s also nice to have the only remaining highly volatile entity already blown up and not trying to kill Rookie.

What’s more in the heavily mixed bag, though, is the gash high on his cheekbone, right below his eye, starting right about at his temple and ending as the thrown weapon had skipped off of his nose. That hurts like hell, and it will not stop bleeding everywhere, no matter how much pressure he tries to apply. 

He can see the weapon that carved the gash over his face, right in front of him, grip buried in the dirt and perfectly visible now that all of the fog is gone and he’s in what is probably the most well-lit place within a hundred miles. The sharp edges of the bladed fan glint Fire Nation red with his blood.

He’s lucky he’s got the shorter, stockier build of an earthbender rather than a firebender, because if that thing hit his neck, he’d absolutely be dead. No question about it. That does not change the fact that where it did hit him stings like nothing else, and also set off the Prince enough to make him completely forget about pursuing the Avatar. Still, better than being dead. Hopefully.

Through intermittent gaps in the lattice, where the threads making it up have peeled away with sinuous, snake-like movements, he catches vague glimmers of gold, green, white, and red as the militia he got only the vaguest of glimpses of attempts to evade the Prince’s aggressive defense.

Rookie can’t do much, trapped behind the cage of writhing flame with his flame-winged commanding officer, except hold down on the cut on his cheek, watch as much of what’s happening outside as he can, and pray that he’ll make it out of here.

-

“Ah. Fuck.” Mustache says articulately, as they both turn away from the cliff’s edge they had reached while chasing the Avatar’s bison and trying to force it to land again. Back where they came, as there has been for a few minutes now, there is the sensation of the second-sun peaking as the night turns to day with a column of fire.

Stubble makes a noise best described as a frog-gull being stepped on.

They both stand frozen and staring for a while.

“So, uh,” Stubble says, “which one of us has to tell the General that we left the Prince alone with the new kid and lost the Avatar?”

“I’ll give you my stew ration for the next week if you do,” Mustache offers.

Stubble gives a weak laugh. “Good thing to know my corpse will be well-fed.”

Mustache stares at the fire some more and then says, weakly, “We’re both so dead.”

-

Suki keeps her fans to herself as she leaps over darting arrows of fire and skids past the crumbling edges of the overabundance of pits in the area. It’s a skill she really wishes her lieutenant had learned before throwing out her weapon and potentially the future of this island, but she can’t exactly fault the girl either. She’s only been training for a year, compared to Suki’s four. She doesn’t have the rigid control born of leadership and fear.

Suki slides under a flare and leaps up to her feet in one smooth motion, not bothering to wipe the dirt off of her sleeves, which are already torn through in some sections, with skinned elbows and forearms underneath. In the same motion, she grabs the shoulders of one paralyzed lieutenant and shoves her under another of the roving lashes of flame that periodically detach from the flaming shell guarding both the Prince and who Suki thinks is probably the earthbender. If he’s still alive. She hopes he’s still alive. All she saw was a lot of blood before everything caught on fire. If one of the Bandit Prince’s men is dead on her watch, then it’s entirely possible that this - screaming lieutenants, crumbling pits, burning houses and all - is fairly close to mercy.

If she had the power to tame the Unagi and set the sky alight, and someone killed one of her people? There wouldn’t be anything left behind. To say nothing of the rumors of something a little - or a lot - less than human about him.

Still, if given the no-consequence opportunity to sock the Prince in the face right now, Suki would definitely take it, as the fire he controls passes close enough to her face to heat up the metal crest on her headdress to just this side of uncomfortable instead of actively damaging.

Suki smacks the wrist of the lieutenant she dragged with her to dodge, loosening the girl’s grip on her fan and plucking it from her hand to replace it at the girl’s belt, where there’s less chance of her doing anything damaging with it. “I will toss you and everyone you know to the Unagi if you even think about using those against anything flesh and blood, got that?”

The girl gives a frightened nod.

Suki nods back and drags her out of the way of another ribbon of fire hunting them without missing a beat or turning to look at it, before releasing her grip and scanning the battlefield that her home has become for any more of her girls that need her help.

She is only vaguely aware that the girl she just helped only takes a few stumbling steps away before tripping directly onto the crumbling lip of the trenches and pits dug throughout her home and falling in.

The work she does is thankless, that much is certain.

It does give her an idea, though.

From the start of this thing, whatever firebenders were out in the darkness were trying to get them into the pits. In hindsight, having all of her frightened, easily spooked lieutenants in a nice, controllable, non-dangerous position probably would have made this encounter much less stressful from the get-go, and probably wouldn’t have resulted in the firestorm before her and the burning houses at her back.

Probably. It might have also left them all dead.

She’s heard rumors about what earthbenders can do with their element. About how they can shove anyone into a pit and have the earth chew up and spit out their bones in seconds flat.

The ringed ravine around the punishment pole is still perfectly intact from where her first set of warriors fell. It hasn’t been swallowed by the earth again, leaving her people to suffocate in their fresh graves. It isn’t a kill-box for the flames, either.

In fact, Suki realizes, as she slides out of the way of another lash of flame, it and every other unnatural gash in the ground is a fox-cat-hole.

She tests her theory the next time one of the flame snakes darts toward her, outrunning it and skirting past one of her lieutenants.

Sure enough, once she outpaces it and the lieutenant is closer, it switches targets for the easier, more immediate prey, closer to the woven pillar of fire.

When she repeats it, she leaps over the edge of a fully crumbled pit and has to scramble to dodge as the nearly sentient fire ignores the easy, close prey below it in favor of her.

Because, she realizes, it’s not about  _ prey. _ It’s about  _ threat. _

She’s been doing this wrong.

She’s been running and dodging and trying to keep the fire from reaching any more houses, feeling that persistent hunted feeling all the while and always circling closer to protect her own and try to work out how to finish this. Feeling like if she stops, if she slows, if she’s injured or incapacitated, that’ll be the end, and it’ll be her blood on the dirt next. But all she’s been doing is acting as the eagle-hawk, circling the nest of a terrified, angry creature as it does its best to frighten her away and out of the sky. Away and into a pit.

When Suki was young, she knew a boy that liked to throw rocks at the salamander-raccoons. Once, he threw a rock at a kit hard enough to kill it and shrugged it off, scoffing at her as she laid down, motionless on the ground.  _ They’re just animals, _ he’d said pleasantly, casually walking closer to appraise his kill,  _ and it’s just rocks. _

He said it like she thought it was the weapon itself she hated, and not the callousness and irreverence he wielded when he threw his rocks without giving any thanks to the creatures he hurt and killed, without any necessity behind his actions, just brutal whimsy. Like the simplicity of the weapon made the transgression any better.

Suki hadn’t twitched an inch as the mother leapt at him, all claws and teeth and fury, warding him away from her other kits with blood and shredded skin.  _ You’re just an animal too, _ she’d said pleasantly, as he screamed and scrambled away, which only incensed the creature more,  _ and it’s just fangs. _

_ We’re both just animals, _ she realizes, staring at the roaring fire before her,  _ and it’s just fans and flames. _

The places to play dead have been provided, dug into the ground and waiting for more people to use them as surrender. To use them to shelter from the protective wrath of the Prince that set the sky alight, warding them away from that which is his that bleeds in the dirt.

So long as they don’t try to run, they won’t become the only targets.

A wolf limping off into the night is a wolf that will come back to kill again. A wolf, docile or dead on the floor, is a wolf that won’t cause trouble.

So, hoping that there’s enough cohesion and trust left in her troops for them to follow her orders, she yells, “Everyone pick a pit and get in! I’ll cover!”

She can physically see where the faction lines of loyalty fracture in real time.

There is a large group, visibly a majority, that hesitate, but start to follow orders all the same, moving together and dropping into the pits carefully and efficiently, sister helping sister. They’ve been serving under her for long enough to trust her, or are new enough to follow orders unthinkingly still.

It’s the other group, however, that she despairs. The group of people that are new enough to not have any sense in their heads and old enough to think for themselves, that see this as her driving them to slaughter in the ravines carved fresh into their home.

That see her order, and decide to run.

-

Threat threat threats are escaping one by one, red, rusted gold blades in hand. They will return and carry their threats threats threats with them again, and they will hurt the hoard again, and that is unacceptable.

They are running, and it makes him want to hunt them down and trap them in claws and fire and fangs. They are running, so they are prey, and they are running, so they are threats. They are both the thing meant to feed the nest and the thing that threatens the hoard, and they are fleeing without consequence, and that is unacceptable. 

_ Stay, _ he wants to hiss.  _ Have you felt the flame enough yet? Have you felt the fear enough yet? Have you shed the blood enough yet? Have you paid back what you’ve taken yet? _

But his mouth is full of sharp, heavy teeth that will cut his tongue if he tries to talk, and his shoulders are hot with the weight of his wings, and his skin cracks and crackles with infinite, horrifying light.

So instead, he raises a hand, and lets his flames speak for him.

-

Rookie watches as the largest swathe of fire yet detaches from their shield and streaks out beyond the line of where the houses lie.

A ring of fire, beyond their shield and beyond the burning houses, boxing everyone into a small space between the Prince and a second inferno. It is meticulously controlled and intimidatingly high.

It also dismantles the shield and veil between Rookie and the outside world enough that he can finally see any of the militia they’ve been facing off against for the past half hour, unblocked by fog or flame and fully illuminated.

The first thing he notes is the fleeing group, shouting and backing away in messy, tangled tumbles from the sudden wall of flame facing them. They are silhouetted perfectly as they stumble back and fall, easy prey for the lines of whirling fire he can see more clearly hunting the premises.

The second thing he notes is that there is an entirely separate, bigger group that are piling into his network of pits and tunnels voluntarily, in semi-orderly fashion. Considering the things he’s seen and heard of enemy earthbenders doing, that seems fantastically stupid. But, with a quick glance up at the Prince, who is snarling out with teeth too big and sharp for his skull and eye glowing gold, controlling the fire from ground level up, Rookie revises his judgment. They’ve probably chosen the safer option. Or, at the least, a quicker one.

Earthbenders don’t play with their kills once they’ve decided the confrontation will end lethally. Firebenders do. Dragons, especially.

The third thing Rookie notes is the girl in the gold headdress running to where the tangle of fallen militia members lay and pulling out two gold fans of the same make as the one that slashed his face, waving them around in the air flashily without using them. Making a lot of chaos and a lot of noise, with a resigned sort of fear in her eyes and her feet firmly planted in front of the others.

Rookie has only been in the military for three years, but he knows the weight of command when he sees it, and this girl wears it.

And she’s also still a child. Not like the Avatar, a Spirit masquerading as a boy, but a young, frightened, human girl.

She has war paint carving her face into sharp lines and elegant, mature shapes, but there is nothing hiding the baby fat on her cheeks, or her height, or the way she holds herself as if she still expects herself to be a fraction shorter than she actually is. There is nothing hiding that, as the Prince takes in this new, flashy threat and peels back his lip further, to where his canines are pointed like ivory daggers.

The flames, writhing and twisting and snakelike, dart toward her as she prepares to protect the people scrambling behind her with her own body and her own weaponry.

One of the militia members stumbles out of the fallen cluster, clutching only one fan, and she doesn’t even look like she’s in her teens, yet. She looks even younger than the girl protecting her, and she looks terrified as she watches the flames streak forward and-

And for a second, as Rookie’s eyes dart back to the grim, terrified face of the girl in charge, who isn’t old enough to be out of Fire Nation boot camp, Rookie sees the painting of his parent’s wedding day. His mother, grotesquely young, staring the painter down with nothing but terror masked by pride on her face.

He sees the other kids put into special classes to learn to civilize their bending, who didn’t wait for the Nation to come calling for their life on the front lines to make up for their sin of being born and took the easy way out. He sees the day he walked back from school and had to step over the cold body and bloodied ground that belonged to one of his fellow colony benders. He sees the classmate that made it with him to be old enough to make it to training, and he sees the way her eyes had turned glassy and empty once the old, bitter veterans in charge had finished punishing her for bending another recruit neck-deep into the dirt, and he had sat in the komodo-rhino stables, learning how to properly chain them to the ground, not helping her as she was killed before him.

He sees it, and he cannot stop seeing it.

And a week ago, a year ago, a lifetime of hell ago, it would not have mattered. Because the enemy is the enemy, their blood is tainted, their lives are worthless. Because that is all he has been taught, by instructors and by horrible, bone-cracking, neck-snapping, flesh-burning example.

The girl, terrified and proud and strong, standing before her people against the Prince of the Nation, would be worth nothing more than another corpse on the ground. Her youth would not matter. Her life would not matter.

But, by Agni and the Triple Spirits both, Rookie can’t make himself believe in that anymore. Not since the mourning howl of the wolf had overpowered the baying of the war dogs. Not since another sailor his own age had stepped forward and spoke of treason to the tune of orthodoxy, and everyone else followed. Not since they both questioned what enemy meant, and what Nation meant, and what victory means when the only thing that ever won any battle was death itself.

Rookie doesn’t know the Prince well. He doesn’t really know the Prince at all, actually. He doesn’t know if this will even work. He doesn’t know if this will stop anything that’s happening or if it will just make it worse, and he doesn’t know if he’ll even survive doing this.

Because he cannot look at that girl and see an enemy. He cannot look at that girl and see a corpse. Because he cannot look the wedding portrait of his mother in the eye if he sits quietly in the corner and watches a girl her age burn like he watched so many of his fellows with granite for bones and micah for hearts get those same things stomped into nothing but dust.

Rookie never expected to make it to nineteen. He thought he’d be dead a thousand times over before now. If this is where he has to go out, trying to save someone else’s life? It’s better than he thought he’d ever get.

It’s treason. It’s insubordination. But it’s what’s right.

There are snakes of fire all around them, rushing forward to clamp jaws down, deadly or not, and they remind him of the chains he locked up the hissing, spitting, fanged komodo-rhinos with.

There isn’t really any time to think, and there’s barely any time to act.

Rookie takes his hand off of his face, covered in his own blood, and slams it onto the ground.

_ You are mine to command, _ he says to the earth in one harsh, heavy motion.  _ You are mine to command and mine to wield and mine to protect with, and you will listen to me, and you will not fracture, and you will not break, for you are my will and my conviction and my weapon and my shield. _

He can feel the scarlet iron meet the dirt, feel the way it rumbles under him.

_ Bind. Hold. Restrain. Restrict. Confine. _

It only takes one moment.

From where the earth is wet with his blood, chains rise, linked with thick stone and slithering like the Prince’s own creations, rising and writhing and binding, link by link wrapping and securing into the earth itself.

And as the Prince falls to his knees, bound, the fire under his control - the shield, the snakes, the wings, the wall - snuffs out.

He snarls, once, pulling against the chains and trying to press forward, fire bleeding from behind his teeth and out into the air.

Rookie leans forward and clamps his free, unbloodied hand over the Prince’s shoulder. “No,” he says. “No. They’re kids. They’re just kids. Don’t do this. Not for me. They’re just kids.”

The Prince turns, teeth bared, eye gold and baleful.

“No.” Rookie says again, adrenaline coursing through him with the knowledge that this might be the last denial he ever gets to make. “This is wrong.”

And the anger in the Prince fizzles out into confusion, and then something much deeper and more conflicted. The glowing cracks smooth over, and the animal fear that became so familiar and nearly comforting in the past few minutes sinks away into nothingness.

It’s by the light of the burning houses that Rookie meets Zuko’s eyes. Not the Prince, not the Wyrm, not the Hunting, Seeking, Burning thing. Zuko. A scared kid that’s a hair away from sixteen, with power in his veins, who just lost control and could’ve killed bystanders. Just like the thing he came here to hunt.

It’s by the light of the burning houses that Rookie sees the dawning, terrified panic and horror in Zuko’s eyes, as he returns to himself with the pressure and grounding of the chains and the hand on his shoulder. He sees the way his Prince’s eyes dart over the casualty-free but burning carnage he’s made. The people, poised and frozen at the edge of throwing themselves into pits, the people, tangled in their panic, the girl, standing before her people with her eyes confused and conflicted and fans braced for an assault, arms scraped and clothing covered in dirt and smeared lightly with blood.

Rookie does not know his Prince very well, but he knows that he did the right thing. He knows, with a bone-deep certainty that is strange and unspoken and undeniably correct, that there isn’t a punishment for this. That, even if he was willing to die for this, he’s not going to. He can’t explain why he knows. He just knows. Maybe because of the terror in his Prince’s eyes. Maybe because of the way he starts to tremble beneath the earth wrapped around his shoulders. Rookie doesn’t need a ‘because’ to justify it, even if he can give them. He just knows.

It’s by the light of the burning houses that the tears start falling, silently, carving thin lines through the ash lightly coating Zuko’s face. That he curls in on himself a little and lets the weight of the actions he almost took bow his spine.

And it’s in that same light, reflecting off of the torn skin and scarlet still dripping from his face, that Rookie reaches forward with bloodied, dirtied hands, calls the chains back into the earth, and wraps his arms around the sobbing boy.

He doesn’t know why he knows to do it, because he just does. It’s not like he ever got any hugs from anyone. It’s not like he’s any good at them. But otherwise, his Prince will be cold and alone, and Rookie knows what that feels like. Rookie wouldn’t wish that on anyone.

It takes a bit of maneuvering before Rookie can hold onto his Prince and keep him grounded and also face the dumbfounded group of clustered militia members, but he manages.

“Hi,” Rookie says, and doesn’t smile, because that will hurt like a bitch, even with the wild adrenaline still running through him and letting him say stupid things without thinking. “Sorry for breaking part of your home. I promise I’ll fix the dirt before I go. Do any of you have any bandages? I don’t know if, uh-” he releases half of his grip to gesture to the cut over half of his face before returning it to the shaking Prince- “this is going to set him off again. I only met him a couple days ago.”

He never took any lessons on diplomacy in school, because he assumed he’d be dead before he ever got to use them, but he does wish he’d taken them now. This would be a lot easier. It also doesn’t help that no one wanted to talk to him as a child except to call him a traitor for his blood and issue him death threats. He has no idea how to do any of this. He just knows that he should do it.

The girl in command lowers her fans slowly. “That’s a... strong response for someone he only met a couple days ago,” she says cautiously.

Rookie shrugs as much as he can with an armful of trembling royalty, feeling shaky and a little numb and a little proud of himself, which is a weird feeling to have. “He’s had a rough week,” he offers. “The moon possessed him. He got fish blood everywhere doing dental work on your sea monster. My old commanding officer was an asshole in his general direction.” He frowns then, and pulls back enough to take a look at his clothing. Sure enough, among the dark red stains of his own blood, there is now a smeared mess of rotting fish blood all over his front.

He’s sitting on the floor, with a good section of his face still bleeding, absolutely covered in rotting fish blood, his own blood, ash, and dust. He’s also the oldest person he can see present. Which. Hmm. Does not seem like that should be how this works.

His Prince pushes a little bit out of his grip, so Rookie lets him go. 

The boy wipes the tears off of his face in a rough swipe of his sleeve, adjusts the embroidered cloth over his eye, and gives an acknowledging nod of his head to the girl in command. “Sorry I tried to kill you,” he offers.

The girl in command looks at him critically and sighs, shoving her fans into holsters on her wrists and taking a few steps closer, which a few of her underlings express vocal displeasure about. She holds up her arm to them, palm back and rigid, telling them to stand down. “One of mine hurt one of yours,” she says with a nod toward Rookie and a vague gesture to the pre-teen still frozen behind her. “I would’ve done the same.”

His Prince nods lightly, and then takes note of the burning houses. His mouth turns into a grim line. With one sweep of his hand, the flames go out entirely, leaving the town square lit only by the stars and moon above and his own glowing, lamplight eye. “Sorry about that,” he mutters, snapping a small globe of flame into existence over his palm to better light the area. “I have some… anger issues. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

The girl in command grimaces a little bit and takes in the damaged, scorched, but still standing houses fully. “You can call it whatever you like, so long as you don’t do it again while you’re on my island.”

His Prince takes a moment to consider that, and then slowly nods. Then, in one smooth motion, he unfurls from the ground and stands up, undershirt visibly shiny with fish blood. “I’ll take that deal. I’d like to make a few more, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The girl in command doesn’t flinch back from the sudden movement, and inclines her head a fraction. “As the highest ranking officer in this island’s militia, I’m open to discussion.”

“Good,” his Prince says, clasping his hands behind his back in a motion that seems like it was learned from watching someone older than him. “I’ll return the fan you used to injure my hoa- my crewman if you provide medical care for the wound.”

“Deal.”

“I’ll keep my Uncle from doing anything drastic if you let me take some stones from your island.”

“...Your Uncle is the Dragon of the West, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t take an entire mountain, and you have a deal.”

“Fair enough. I’ll also show you how I tamed the Unagi if you let us remain docked on your island until noon tomorrow and let me and my injured man stay in one of the burned houses.”

“I… I’m definitely not saying no, but you do realize that I can’t exactly stop you from staying here, yes?”

“I’m aware. But it’s polite, and the Unagi is lonely.”

“Triple Spirits, that’s… ominous. Deal.”

Rookie waves a little from where he sits on the ground, blood loss making him a little woozy and adrenaline only barely keeping him sitting upright now that the threat as a whole is gone and they’ve entered into the bureaucracy phase of things. “Uh. Can someone fix my face, please? Preferably before I pass out?” The ground blurs a little bit in front of him and he throws his hand out to the side to catch himself as the world spins. “Oh, too late.”

-

The senior crewmen arrive, stumbling, to find their Prince sitting with his back to the tall, remarkably unscathed punishment pole in the village center, with his legs acting a pillow for the new recruit, who has a salve-coated bandage covering part of his face and is deeply unconscious. The Prince is in a somewhat relaxed conversation with one of the people they tried to knock off of the rooftops, which, upon closer examination, is a literal child. There are other literal children helping yet more literal children out of the pits in the ground.

The last time they came here, they’d sort of assumed they had happened upon a small group of children very invested in a game, not the actual militia of the island. It makes their betting a little more awkward.

The Prince clocks them the second they arrive out of the shadows, head raising and staring straight at them. “Crewmen. I’m showing the Captain of these warriors how to deal with the Unagi tomorrow. Please go find where my Uncle docked and explain that we will be staying the night.”

Mustache clears his throat and avoids the scrutinizing gaze of the kid with the headdress who was talking with the Prince up until they showed up. “Do you want us to take the new guy back so the medic can look at him, or…?”

The Prince meets his gaze evenly. “Crewman, if he gets out of my eyeline before dawn, I am going to lose it again. I recommend you inform my Uncle of the situation before he tries to storm this place with half of the crew.”

Stubble raises his hands in surrender and backs away slowly. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”

They get halfway to where their emergency docking position was set to be in case of a scenario just like this before Mustache finally breaks composure, leans over, and thunks his head against a tree repeatedly. “We,” he starts, rhythmically banging his skull against the bark and miserably sing-songing his next words, “have to tell the Dragon of the West that his nephew just emotionally bonded with the only earthbender on our boat, and now wants a sleepover with the people he was trying to lightly maim an hour ago so he can show them how to deal with the murder fish. And that we left him alone and couldn’t stop the Avatar from escaping.”

Stubble claps him on the shoulder hesitantly. “We,” he starts, initially trying for something optimistic, but continuing with his voice cracking with despair, “are both so dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Zuko, coasting comfortably through a mental breakdown: today has not been cash money. today has been the opposite of cash money. I'm going to hang out with the cool kids for a while until I stop wanting to cry.
> 
> Rookie, passed out on the floor: i'm speedrunning treason and remembering all of my childhood trauma.
> 
> Aang: i'm twelve. i'm a little baby. why is this happening to me. why. god. please.
> 
> I can and will make sure everybody gets a hug. That's a threat.
> 
> I didn't mean to give Rookie a character arc. Or as fucked up of a backstory as I did. And now he has both, and I want to love him forever.
> 
> Also, wanderNavi is making me fanart??? Which is?? amazing????? The link is in the related works section, and it is absolutely fantastic. [Here's another link for it, too.](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25368157)
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/)


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's been a time skip of a couple days from the last chapter. I've gotta get these kids moving, or I'll never get them to meet who they need to meet and do what they have to do before shit can get real.

Omashu is tall and intimidating, and Aang feels small before its looming heights. The chasm the thin path leading to Omashu runs over is deep and terrifying, and Aang feels tiny in comparison.

Even back in his time, it was one of the most ambitiously, intelligently designed cities in the Kingdom, with each of the Triple Spirits represented in the path, the chasm, and the height of the city itself.

_ “Omashu is supposed to look toward the future,” Bumi had explained, tossing another rock at the mail chute and watching with intelligent eyes as it tumbled down, “that’s why it’s a city on a pedestal, not a city behind walls. It’s a representation of Parvata. We’re supposed to be a beacon of ingenuity. We _ sure are _ living up to that.” His last words were dry with sarcasm as he tossed a flickering, ambitious look toward the palace at the top. “I swear, I’m going to make good on that promise once I get into that chair.” _

Aang startles as Katara gently brushes against his wrist. He becomes very aware, suddenly, that he stopped midway down the path.

“It’s just me,” Katara is quick to say, with a small smile that doesn’t quite reach her eyes. It’s been a few tense, quiet days since they left Kyoshi Island. None of them feel very good about what they’ve done. Katara has taken advantage of their times when Sokka goes off somewhere else to either cry, practice with his fans, or both to teach him some key phrases of waterbending, not that a lot of water seems overly keen on following all of his directions.

Katara tugs at her collar to hide her necklace, her hair loops tucked behind her ears and adjusted to make the beads less visible. Sokka’s own hair is loose except for the smallest of wolf tails gathered at the back of his skull, and he seems to despise his new look, given the way he constantly scowls at the loose hair and shakes it out of his face. Aang just wishes he had more of a disguise than the light, tiger-seal skin cloak Katara had brought, and loose fabric strips wrapped around the mastery tattoos on his hands.

Sokka, shoulders still set with that little bit of nagging tension that hasn’t left him since he left Kyoshi Island, whistles lowly, while his eyes track the walls like he’s looking for weak points and handholds. “This is… wildly impressive.”

“It took a lot of earthbenders, from what I heard,” Aang offers, tugging on the hood over his tattoos nervously. “Enough that the first King of it had to fight for a week to get the throne.”

“Huh. Trial by combat?” Sokka rubs his nose a little and kicks a rock over the edge to watch it tumble down. “I didn’t know the Earth Kingdom did it like that. I thought it was a lineage thing.”

Aang shakes his head and tightens his grip on his staff masquerading as a walking stick, starting forward again. “The Earth Kingdom doesn’t; Omashu does. Ba Sing Se does it by lineage. Every major city-state is supposed to have its own King, and they each get to choose how they pick their own ruler.” Aang hops neatly over a divot in the path and does his best to focus on the words and his own feet, not the destination he’s heading towards. “It helps them represent their own territory better based on what they value the most, while also being equals in title.” They need more supplies, and they need to figure out where the closest Fire Nation patrols are, so they can do another flyby. He can do this.

He doesn’t want to be back here. He knew this place. Even from a distance he can already see changes. The Southern Air Temple was dead and frozen in time, but Omashu is a painful reminder of how much time has passed since he last set foot on this soil.

Katara eyes him from the side and clocks something in his body language, apparently, because she steps a smidge closer and sighs softly. “So, you were here before, huh?”

Aang nods a little hesitantly. “Yeah, how could you tell?”

Katara shrugs and shifts her weight a little bit as she walks in a motion that Aang can almost recognize as a waterbending command. “You’ve got the same look in your eyes that dad did every time he came home. He’d leave for a year or two and come back to everything just slightly different than he left it. You’ve got a whole century of everything moving slightly differently.”

Aang purses his lips but nods again, shifting his grip on his staff. “The city was shorter, last time I was here,” he offers, once the silence stretches like the road before them. “The path was wider, too. There were other people on the road. The walls were less… I don’t know, actually. They’re different, but I- I guess I don’t remember it well enough to say why. Oh, and everyone I know from here is probably dead.” Aang winces a little at his own tone. “Sorry. That was harsh-”

“Who all did you know from here?” Sokka interrupts, staring fixedly ahead. The tension in his shoulders is a little more pronounced.

Aang twirls his staff mindlessly over his hand and then remembers himself and returns it back to being a glorified walking stick. “I didn’t know a lot of them by name. A lot of kids back then still believed their parents when they said that all airbenders were Spirits in disguise, so they never gave me their names.” Aang picks slightly at the cloth wrapped around his hands. “There was Bumi, though. He was a mad genius. Strongest earthbender I’ve ever met. He was gunning to win the throne.”

They’re approaching the wall, now, and Katara shoulders her pack to carry their supplies and their money and adjusts her hair one more time. “He could be alive,” she says quietly to Aang. “Avatar Kyoshi lived to be over two hundred years old. Strong earthbenders live longer than most people.”

Aang gives her a wobbly smile and leans more on his staff the closer they get to the guards. “Thanks, Katara.” He knows she’s right, but he knows better than to hope. The ability to live to naturally old ages doesn’t mean anything if someone burns you alive.

Sokka pulls to the head of the group, standing that fraction taller to hide them a little better behind him as they approach the guards.

“State your business,” one of them calls.

Sokka does something, somehow, with his body language, that conveys both pride, guilt, and shame. “I’m Shu, this is my sister Wen, and my brother, Shen. Our house and food stores got scorched by a Fire Nation patrol,” he says, and shifts his weight on his feet slightly. “Our parents told us to come here to get more rations and to be out of the way while they fix the roof.”

The guard squints at them - Sokka, standing protectively in front of the others with the bearing of someone not used to being the only person there to protect someone, Katara, mostly empty pack on her shoulder, and Aang, face and tattoos hidden, shifting unsteadily on his feet and pressing against his walking stick with a lot of his weight. They certainly fit the bill.

The guards exchange a look, and then shrug and wave them through, bending open the wall to allow them entry. Katara and Sokka don’t even try to hide their awe, while Aang mostly concentrates on coming across as someone too weak to be a threat to anyone.

The walls slide shut behind them with a rumbling clap.

The inside of Omashu is definitely more crowded and chaotic than it appears from the outside, or from the road heading in. Some people are milling around, but it mostly seems crowded around a cabbage stand, where a large number of people carrying instrument cases of some sort are leaning halfway over the counter, chattering nonstop with some section periodically breaking out into song.

They roar with laughter and then hum and holler a jaunty, fast tune that nobody seems to know the exact lyrics to, since it turns into a jumble of syllables under the same notes without a single word discernible. 

The cabbage merchant slams his hand onto the front of his stall. “That’s enough! For the last time, I have no idea what my brother is writing, I have no idea what he’s playing, and I don’t want to know! I am here to sell cabbages!” He points an accusing finger at the closest people. “If I have to hear one more _ word _ about the Bandit Prince, or one more verse about hunting the Avatar, you are all getting rotten product to the face!”

Aang tugs the hood further over his mastery tattoos and adjusts the fabric looped around his arms.

“Well,” Sokka says, “shit. That doesn’t seem great.”

Katara shakes her head and quickly adjusts the hair loop that fell from behind her ear. “No, it doesn’t. But so long as we lay low, don’t get noticed, and keep to ourselves, we should be fine.”

-

An hour later, they are sat at a long table with a very, very old man wearing the King’s crown and a crooked grin, after being brought by a few of the guards looking for people of their exact description.

“Hello, Avatar and company,” the King crows, and waves all of his guards away. “I’m glad to see you!” His eyes are unreadable and glint madly with some kind of volatile emotion. His smile doesn’t change at all from its jagged, crazed position, and he sits slumped and hunched in his elaborate dining chair.

At least, until the guards have all cleared out of the room and the door has slammed shut with a loud bang.

Then the King sits up, and the smile turns much more quiet and conspiratorial. The eyes remain as bright and mad as before, but now there is something intelligent and seeking in them. “Good, good, you’re here. I was given notice that you all were headed north by a good friend of mine!” He whips a letter out of his hair and brandishes it proudly in the air before crushing it into a tiny ball and throwing it into the fireplace. He flashes his more crazed grin again and leans back in his chair. “As a matter of security, I want you out of my city as quickly as possible! As a matter of respect and a favor for that same good friend, I’m also providing shelter and information. It’s hard to save the world, after all, Avatar Aang, if you don’t know who you’re saving from what, when, why, and with an empty stomach!”

Aang opens his mouth and no sound comes out as the words crystallize in his mind. “I never gave you my name,” he whispers.

The King laughs, full and loud and squeaking. “Of course you did! I gave you mine before I shoved you down the mail chute the first time, and I learned yours on the way down!” He doesn’t let any of them process that before continuing on, “Anyway! Down to business! You can hear about how the Bandit Prince became who he is from any two-bit bard, so I won’t bother with the details. You should know, however, that he will not stop hunting you until he gets what he wants, and he can only be outrun, really. You’re too inexperienced to face off against him, at the moment, even if he’s looking for blood.”

“Whoa, whoa, slow down,” Sokka says, making a soothing motion with his hands. “The who-what now? And who are you?”

“Bumi,” Aang says, and stares at the face of his friend, wrinkled with age and barely recognizable, feeling slight nausea rise up at this most perfect example of all of the time he’s lost. “You finally made it to the throne.”

King Bumi smiles wildly. “Correct! Now, if you don’t mind, I have limited time to explain the current state of the war, who you can trust, who will try to kill you, and who can kill you, and, most importantly, your food will get cold if we dilly-dally. There’s a comet coming, after all! But, more immediately, probably the Bandit Prince, and I don’t know if I trust my walls to hold up against him, so chop-chop! You eat, I’ll explain.”

-

Rookie sits quietly by the prow of the ship, a collection of rocks in his lap and a ball of clay in his hands. The first are from Kyoshi Island, while the last came from the last place they docked, which both of the firebenders from the mission on Kyoshi Island brought to him with nervous, pained smiles on their faces. Rookie didn’t have to look over his shoulder to know that the Dragon of the West was watching that exchange. The man has a presence about him, when he wants to. The firebenders have, somehow, always been on cleaning duty ever since. Rookie feels bad for them.

The rocks help, in an odd way. They’re better than the coal, in a way that he can’t quite explain. Maybe it’s because they come from a place specifically made by earthbending, or maybe it’s because they are his, but so long as he keeps them near him, the constant nausea of being at sea doesn’t affect him like it normally does.

He taps a few careful patterns against the clay, tilting his head as he tries out another method to dictate the fine movements he needs to form the details on his piece. The entire back end of it turns into a jagged block, and he gives up with a sigh that pulls on the barely healed skin on his cheek, smushing the clay back into one large ball again.

“Aw,” a voice comes from over his shoulder, causing him to jump and try to lurch around, nearly dropping the rocks out of his lap, “That looked nice.” There’s a guy his own age hanging upside down from the ropes. He throws out a tiny wave and thumps down onto the deck next to Rookie, taking a seat right next to him without any hesitation, holding out a hand cheerfully. “Name’s Bo! The cooler Bo. Don’t tell other Bo I said that.”

Rookie blinks and laughs nervously, before giving his birth name back and hesitantly shaking the offered hand.

Bo blinks back and makes a weird face as he tries to pronounce the name silently and can’t get his mouth over the syllables. “What…? Can you repeat that?”

Rookie sighs and settles in for the long, arduous task of socialization. “You can just call me Rookie.”

“Fair enough,” Bo returns.

Somehow, they’re still talking by the time the sun sets, and Rookie has remade his clay creation a dozen times as every version turned out more blocky and deformed than intended.

“Is it weird, bending?” Bo asks, sprawled all over the deck, staring up at where the first stars are breaking through the sky. “I always wanted to know.”

Rookie shrugs a bit. “I don’t know. It’s a… a part of me, I guess? I don’t know.” He laughs a little, leaning back to take in the stars as well. “I’m a Fire Nation earthbender. It’s not like anyone ever encouraged me to bend a whole lot. I think this is the longest conversation I’ve had with… anybody.”

Bo laughs, cynically. “I know that feeling.” He does light, exhausted jazz hands against the deck. “The only nonbender in a family of firebenders, here. The local disappointment!”

Rookie laughs along too, just as bitterly, and turns his head just enough to catch sight of the two benders by the sails, doing something complicated and wispy with their movements that he can’t even parse. “Are they airbenders?” he asks, watching the way the sails billow. Normally, he would consider that an impossibility, but it’s been a few days since they left Kyoshi Island, and coming up on two weeks aboard the ship, and just about anything could seem normal right about now.

Bo shakes his head. “Nah, just firebenders really good at manipulating heat. The Prince taught them how, though, and I think he learned it from an Air Spirit, so who knows. It’s a bit like-” He eyes the creation taking shape under Rookie’s hands. “Like that. You’ve been messing with it all day, under the sun, and it isn’t dry yet. You change how malleable it is with earthbending, but someone else could call that waterbending. When you bend one of those rocks to fly at somebody’s face, they could call that airbending. Same with waterbenders, really, changing their element to ice or steam or whatever. That could be seen as firebending, but it's not. It sort of… puts everything into perspective. Everybody is like everybody else, and we’re all trying to kill each other.”

Rookie blinks at him, letting that statement wash over him fully, and then sets his partially formed creation back onto his lap. “For a nonbender, you’ve put a lot of thought into it.”

Bo laughs and takes a quick scan of the deck. He groans lightly and levers himself back up to sitting. “Ah, damn it. General’s on deck. Don’t look, he’s got the ‘Prince Zuko isn’t listening to me right now, so I’ll stare at someone that doesn’t make sense to me to see if I can work out anything from them’ look on his face. Looks like I can’t slack off.”

Rookie keeps facing forward, now hyper-aware of the gaze of the Dragon of the West on his spine. “Wait,” he says, before he can stop himself, because now there’s curiosity thrumming through him. “Why _ did _ you put all of that thought into bending? I could understand you thinking about firebending, but why- why enemy bending?”

Bo chuffs out something that could be considered a laugh, under duress. “I never got to take fire for granted, like everybody else,” he says, and slaps his hand against the deck as he clambers back up to his feet. “Never learned the katas, only got to watch them. I’ve been all around the world at this point, and I’ve watched all kinds of people doing all kinds of bending, with about as much understanding of their style as any kind of firebending. I might be able to feel where Agni and the Prince are most of the time, but I have about as much connection and fealty to the Fire Sages and their element as I do any of the bones I helped gather in an Air Temple and the stuff that pushed them over the edge. Everybody thinks differently, and everybody moves differently, but everyone’s just the same. If I can’t understand any of the people I cross paths with, running after the Prince as he tries to stop that week’s supernatural entity, then they’ll never have a chance in Koh’s Lair to understand me.”

Rookie nods and averts his eyes back to the stubborn clay. He tries tapping out another pattern, forcing his will onto it, and the section deforms and distends into another blocky, harsh shape that makes him groan in frustration.

Bo grabs his hand before he can squish the partially made creation back into another ball and start all over again. “Don’t give up on it,” he orders, softly but firmly. “Whether you’ve got the blood of the Kingdom or the Nation in you, you’ve got the blood of the most stubborn people left in this world. Try loosening up a little. If you think in blocks, you’re going to make blocks.” He gusts out a sigh and stretches. “Thanks for the lovely chat. You might want to put some more of the salve on your cheek, it started bleeding like five minutes ago but I thought it was a little awkward to mention it. I’ve got ropes to tie, gossip to hear, the works. Stop by again if you want to hear any stories. I’ve seen some shit.”

He gives a conspiratorial wink and reaches upward, grabbing onto a rope and hoisting his entire body up with one arm, twisting around until he can keep climbing up the ropes like a spider-monkey.

Rookie watches him go, and thinks about the carefree way he moves through the open air and over the ropes, checking them as he goes. Thinks about the clay in his hands. Thinks about the ocean eating him whole. Thinks about the snakes of fire arcing through the air. Thinks about his blood on the earth, spawning fluid, wrapping, writhing chains. Thinks about Bo’s words. Thinks.

He moves his hand up to his cheek, taking back his fingers vaguely red with blood from the cracked edges of the scab on his face. He presses those same fingers to his clay creation, and presses with a drumming, flowing, sharp, smooth motion, like water and earth and fire and air at once.

In his hands, the clay ripples, tail looping around his wrist and writhing like a living creature, a snout and nostrils forming with fangs and scales crawling over its hide. It twists and crawls up to his shoulder as he tells it to, and has blank, empty, earthen eyes that stare at the world blindly, the left spotted red with his blood.

Rookie turns his head to see the Dragon of the West, standing at the rail, cup of tea in hand, watching him carefully, with the stone-faced curiosity of a man who has administered a test and wants to see it passed.

Rookie gives a deep, respectful nod, and flicks his wrist slightly. The clay dragon wrapped around his neck, guarding his injured side, bows.

-

This Monstrosity has a new Friend. she looks much like Master Painted In Bone And Blood, and wields the same golden claws, but she is kinder. Sun-Brother guided her to This Beast and made introductions, blood to blood and skin to scales.

This Abomination calls her the Painted Elver, and she swims side by side with This Creature and soothes This Monster’s scales, dressed in her own dark coat. she reeked of hesitance and fear, when she met This Monstrosity first, but she has grown past that.

she comes to clean the fish bones away when the driftwood from the Island That Must Be Protected sets off toward the distant Other Lands, and when they return. silly little Painted Elver, who thinks that he will attack the driftwood carrying the people of the Island That Must Be Protected. silly little Painted Elver, with soft, sure hands and soft, sure words.

she is not as warm as Sun-Brother or Master Painted In Bone And Blood, but she is enough, and she has come every day since Sun-Brother introduced her and then left with his hoard. she does not care that her painted face smudges in the waves. she does not care that This Creature bares sharp teeth at her when she arrives, for she knows that it is not a threat, but a showing of whether This Monster’s maw is clean and clear. she learns quickly.

she is restless, though. the Painter Elver sees the horizon and the whole of her yearns to chase it. This Abomination can feel it.

as the Painted Elver leaves for the day, trailing water into the sand of the Island That Must Be Protected, staring at the place where the sun had set with her calculating, conflicting, tiny eyes, This Monstrosity sinks beneath the waves with a hiss.

no Friend ever stays for long. not since Master Painted In Bone And Blood disappeared.

that is fine, however. centuries of loneliness mean nothing in the face of a few days of comfort.

centuries of loneliness mean nothing, if This Behemoth can protect the Island That Must Be Protected.

This Abomination is familiar with duty. This Beast can tell what it is that calls the Painted Elver forward.

-

Aang can’t sleep.

They have their supplies for when they leave in the morning already packed. They know where the closest patrol to fly by is. They’ve been given guest rooms in the palace to use for the night. They’ve been given food and water.

They have not been given peace of mind. Not in the slightest.

Aang mouths out the details that Bumi had shared with him, his wrinkled face contorting around the words and crooked adult teeth clacking around some syllables.

Ozai, the Firelord. Azula, his heir. Zuko, the Bandit Prince, forced out of the royal family. A flameless, forsaken throne that has not stopped the military efforts to take over the entire Earth Kingdom. Colonies lining the western coast. A demolished Southern Water Tribe, which he already knew. A silent Northern Water Tribe, which is new. Major city-states that he visited a hundred years ago burned and demolished, or enveloped by the now bloated and greedy walls of Ba Sing Se. An almost completely successful attempt to make the Kingdom unite under one King, instead of the King’s Council. Insurgent Fire Nation groups filling up the hidden valleys of the Earth Kingdom, in conflict with or as hesitant allies with local guerilla forces. A wooden ship, nearly three years in service, traveling with supernatural speed to deal with all manners of the supernatural, led by the Bandit Prince and his uncle, who broke the impenetrable wall of Ba Sing Se. Rogue Spirits rearing their heads for the first time in centuries. The comet he learned so much of as a child set to streak over the sky again in the summer, ready to set off a fresh genocide. Three elements left to master in the time it takes most Avatars to learn the basics of one. War, strife, chaos, death.

So many delicate details- except they aren’t even details. They are the broad strokes, the base that the world is built off of. He’s just too used to the way the painting used to look. He just has so much to catch up on.

He taps his staff against the edge of the roof and stares up at the stars, letting the wind gust over him as his oldest friend.

“You know, I gave you a room for a reason, Aang.”

Speaking of old friends…

Aang hums and taps his staff against the edge of the roof again, looking out over the dark countryside. There are no bonfires lighting up distant village squares for dancing. There are no candles burning in scholar’s windows. It’s too dangerous, now. The Fire Nation could find them and use their own light against them. “Can’t sleep. There’s… a lot to process. A lot to learn.”

Bumi laughs, harsh and croaking, and bends himself up on a pillar so he’s roughly equal to Aang. “I don’t envy you for that, Avatar,” he says, teasing, and then turns more grim and genuine, “I don’t envy you at all.”

Aang rolls his shoulders back and stares fixedly at a small smattering of stars in the sky. “I don’t need pity, Bumi. I just need to do this right. I need to do something right.”

Bumi sighs and settles down with his bones creaking. “Trust an old man when he says that doing something right is hard in times like these. Being cruel is easy. It’s mindless, half the time. Kindness is the difficult one. It’s even harder to know when to use either.” Bumi sighs and stretches out his legs, like they’re both twelve and dancing over the rooftops again. “And sometimes, you can’t be cruel or kind. That’s why I choose to be crazy. I’m pretty sure it’s not the right choice, but I’m pretty sure it’s not the wrong one either!”

Aang turns to look at him, with his long white beard and hunched back, his wrinkles and hard-won wisdom. He can’t see the boy he knew, for some reason, even though he knows he should. He can’t see the idealism anymore. The drive to make progress, to innovate, to make the future better.

He looks over the city, too, and notes that all of the changes that seemed so vast and inconceivable on the way in seem so small and petty from this height. Replaced roofs and redone tiling. More mail chutes. Tiny differences. Far from the dreams he remembers the person sharing the roof with him had a month ago. A hundred years ago.

“What happened, Bumi?” he asks, before he can think twice about it. “What happened to the you that was my age, that wanted to make change and had the mad genius to pull it off? Where did he go?” _ Am I going to end up like you? _ He doesn’t say. _ Am I just supposed to accept this? _

Bumi sighs heavily, painfully, like he was expecting the question but hates receiving it all the same. “That’s a long story, Aang. A long, painful story.”

Aang taps his staff against the edge of the roof again and rubs his hand over the stone tiles, back and forth. “That seems like the only kinds of stories that exist, nowadays.”

So Bumi tells him.

Three decades after Aang disappeared and the Fire Nation killed the Air Nomads, Omashu’s king, rooted in tradition, refusing to make any large military moves, and stubbornly denying any changes to the status quo, died. Bumi was excited for the chance to take the throne, enact change, make innovative weaponry to win the war, and fix everything. He had spent most of his life hating the strategy and policy the King had enacted, even if the fight for the title was a younger man’s game.

So he entered, and went down to the traditional battleground for all of Omashu’s Kings to prove their right to the crown, the abyss around the city.

He lost.

Another man took the crown. Someone younger and smarter and more ingenious than even Bumi. He pledged to do all of the changes that Bumi had wanted and more. He had plans. Genius plans. For a while, Bumi gave up on the idea of becoming King, as he watched all of his ideas and more come to fruition.

And three years after the change in leadership, the Fire Nation attacked, and Omashu was nearly overrun, because they had overreached their resources. The city burned as much as a stone city could. The King was killed. Their progress on weaponry stolen by the enemy. Omashu was almost lost entirely to the invading forces, and only taken back with heavy casualties as Omashu’s own weapons were used against its people.

When the time came to go down to the ravine and fight for the throne, Bumi was one of the few that arrived for the free-for-all. Everyone else was either dead, disillusioned, or trying to piece their family back together.

Bumi won. It was a hollow victory.

Bumi had always wanted to guide his people to a prosperous, better future, before the war broke out, and even more now. At twelve years old, if he could’ve, he would’ve announced sweeping changes to policy, to taxes, to guilds, to weapons development and military recruitment. At forty-five years old, ruling over a husk of a city, he just tried to pull it back together enough to withstand the next siege. To keep out the next famine and the next plague.

He lost hope that he could make any kind of meaningful change to make the future of Omashu better. He could only really concentrate on making sure that Omashu would _ have _ a future of any sort. 

He has friends around the world, though, all working together to try and nudge the world onto a safer, better path. Friends like the one that told him the Bandit Prince was hunting Aang. His last-ditch attempt, a hundred and twelve years into his life and sixty-seven years into his reign, to make the change he wanted back when Air Nomads still roamed the skies.

“I don’t have that hope anymore, Aang,” Bumi says, tapping thickly jointed fingers on the rooftop tiles, “It’s been burnt out of me like my people were burnt out of their homes. I’ve had a long time to lose my idealism and do my best to be the worst example for my successor to try to live up to. You’ve still got that hope in you. You’ve still got a chance. Don’t lose that spark. Don’t let anyone burn that out of you.”

Aang tightens his grip on his staff and brings it closer to his body. “Everyone I knew is dead, Bumi. You and me are probably some of the last people alive that remember what peace felt like. No one even knows what they’re hoping for anymore.”

“You do,” Bumi counters. “You know. You remember what harmony felt like, even if I’m too old to remember it properly. You’ve got the last of a dream I thought died a long time ago with you. You want to do one right thing? Then survive, and bring peace to everyone that doesn’t remember what it felt like to have balance. I think I can muster up enough faith to believe in you, even if I don’t have enough to believe in me.”

Aang purses his lips and looks back up at the stars. “When I’m done learning how to waterbend,” he starts, “can I come back to learn earthbending from you?”

Bumi laughs again, booming and sad at the same time. “No, no. I may still be the best earthbender in Omashu, to my knowledge, but I’m too old for that sort of thing. Earthbending needs someone stubborn, commanding, and true to their convictions. It’s not the sort of thing a hopeless old man could teach someone who’s supposed to believe in the best of the world.” He sighs. “Besides, Omashu won’t be standing for very long. There’s a siege in the works, and I don’t think I can do anything to stop it when it comes. I’d rather have my people as wards of the Fire Nation than enemies, when the comet comes.”

Aang’s blood runs cold. “You’re sacrificing your city?”

Bumi shakes his head with a sigh, and looks down at the place he is sworn to rule and protect. “Hopefully, I’m saving it.” He glances at Aang, with tired eyes that still have that mad intelligence in them. “When you look for someone to teach you to earthbend, find someone that reminds you of the kid you knew, not the man I am now. Get some rest, Aang.”

Bumi stands with creaking joints and bends himself back off of the roof, shuffling back to his own quarters.

Aang stays frozen on that roof for a long time before he makes his way back to his rooms.

He stays in the bed provided, staring ceaselessly at the ceiling, until Sokka knocks on the door to wake him up.

-

Admiral Chan doesn’t have a lot of time for bottom-feeders most days. Especially not when the docks are alive with rumors of the Avatar and the savages travelling with it. Not when there are maps to study and rumors to trace and dangerous creatures to hunt and kill.

This bottom-feeder, however, is the one that was nearly demolished by the Avatar. Records from the officers under his command show that, over the two years the man has been banished from the Fire Nation for a ‘Spirit-related incident of disfavor’, he has attempted to make contact with Admiral Chan no less than thirty times, each time claiming to have valuable, secret information.

Admiral Chan can already tell that this meeting will be a headache, and that’s before the man swaggers into the room with the raw overconfidence of a man with entirely too much pride and entirely too little shame.

“Report,” the Admiral orders, refusing to visibly look up from the report on his desk he’s only halfway reading. It’s always a fascinating way to judge character, to see how someone reacts when largely unacknowledged by authority.

The man begins to give a slow, likely dramatized recount of his experience facing off against the Avatar, visibly growing tense and irritated the further he gets into his story and the longer Chan refuses to acknowledge him. Just exactly the sort of scum that Chan had hoped the height and power of his position would keep him from ever needing to talk to again. A glory-seeker.

Admiral Chan did his research before allowing the man anywhere near his fleet, as is routine whenever a mention of Spiritual favor or disfavor is marked on his visitor’s records. Lieutenant Zhao only barely scraped onto Admiral Chan’s flagship, due to his marked incident being both disputable and a matter of the Earth Kingdom’s heathen Spirits, not the bloodthirsty gods the savages pray to or his own Lord Agni.

An entire set of villages demolished in the wake of the Lieutenant and his unit’s steps, and it was the burning of a boy that did it. Or so the investigators claim, at least. A fresh gash in the earth ate all of Lieutenant Zhao’s comrades, with he himself only narrowly escaping. Their brother unit found the man next to the pit with gravel embedded in his forearm in a snarling shape, with the child’s burned corpse next to him.

The official report and official ruling declares Spirit involvement, but the Lieutenant himself claims the child did it as the boy burned. The Admiral does not wish to deny either account. He knows better than to deny the Spirits, now, and he knows better than to excuse potential enemy child benders wreaking havoc before they can be put down.

After all, he has a history with both.

Lieutenant Zhao finishes his story, having given little more than what rumors are already spreading over the world. Useless, really. A waste of Admiral Chan’s time. The Admiral waves a hand, dismissing him, and flips another page of the report on his desk.

Zhao does not move. An oil slick grin covers his face, even though his shoulders are still hiked in irritation.

“Lieutenant Zhao,” Admiral Chan drawls, not giving him the courtesy of any eye contact as he emphasizes the title, “I believe I dismissed you. Your story is done, correct?”

Zhao falls out of his parade rest and moves forward - insolent - to sprawl, oozing arrogance, on the couch the Admiral reserves only for his favored guests and his pet tigerdillo. “That story, yes. But I’ve got others you could find interesting.”

Admiral Chan sets his report down on the desk with a hard thump of paper and finally deigns to make eye contact with his impertinent guest. “I highly doubt that, _ Lieutenant,” _Chan says, with the careful, deadly calmness that he's been known to use right before killing someone. “You are dismissed.”

Zhao leans forward, and his eyes glint with the sort of madness common in those that have earned the Spirit’s disfavor. It’s a look Admiral Chan hates with all of his heart. “I know you did your research on me, Admiral. You have a stellar reputation for thoroughness. A reputation for other things, too. Such as losing family members.”

Admiral Chan jolts out of his chair, slamming his hands against his desk and snarling out at the Lieutenant that, if he does not shut up, will likely be a scorch mark on his floorboards within the next few minutes. “Shut your mouth, Zhao!”

Zhao raises his hands in haughty surrender. “I’m not criticizing or threatening, Admiral,” he says, in a chiding tone that makes Chan’s knuckles ache to punch him right across the jaw, fire be damned. “I’m here to offer you an opportunity for revenge.”

_ Revenge. _

Oh, Admiral Chan hates this man with all of his heart, but if he can provide that? Maybe he won’t leave here a piece of human charcoal.

“Explain.”

It’s common knowledge, to anyone with any sort of access to military records or half an ear to any gossip, that Admiral Chan and his family have a long but deeply troubled relationship to the sea. They are either made great by it or destroyed by it, and occasionally both. His family comes from old merchant money. They’ve also lost a fair portion of that old merchant money to doomed voyages over the centuries. They’ve led some of the greatest, most successful naval campaigns in history, and lost some of the most pivotal battles.

The War, for there isn’t an epitaph that can stick to something as consuming as this, has only emphasized that.

Admiral Chan is the most successful man in the Fire Nation fleet, at the cost of what seems to be everyone he loves.

His eldest boy was a Southern Raider before a freak storm destroyed his vessel. His brother was a merchant until a rogue waterbender drowned him as a distraction to get away from the authorities. His wife and mother were on a ferry passing through the edge of northern waters when they dragged up a poor, drowning child that proceeded to break the boat in half and kill almost everyone on board.

If Admiral Chan wasn’t so damn successful, he would leave the service immediately. But instead he’s here, the man most likely to be promoted to Fleet Admiral, despising the Water Tribe and their savage, cruel gods with all of his heart.

“Before my-” Zhao grimaces and spits out the next words with venom- _ “banishment, _I made a discovery. I won’t bore you with the details, Admiral, but suffice it to say I doubt my unit was killed and I cursed for the death of one simple child. I suspect it has more to do with the information I stole.”

Admiral Chan sinks slowly back into his seat, sliding the report off to the side so he can lean forward against his desk. “In your report to the authorities and the Firelord himself, you claim that the scum you eliminated was the one that killed your unit.”

Zhao shrugs, that madness still blazing in his eyes. “I’m willing to entertain both beliefs wholeheartedly. Their veracity is a matter of opinion.”

_ Only to a madman, _ Chan thinks, and does not question any further. “You claim you stole information? Of what kind?”

Zhao throws his head back and laughs, a sound that skids and skitters down Admiral Chan’s spine in an exceptionally uncomfortable way. “You see, this is where I can offer you your revenge,” he says, and snaps his head back straight. “I can give you the knowledge you need to have to exact your vengeance, Admiral. I can tell you how to cripple and destroy the Water Tribe for life, but I want something in return.”

Chan waves his hand dismissively and leans back in his chair. “Name your terms.”

“I want a promotion,” Zhao starts, “to Captain or higher, preferably. The Prince’s little pyre has been irritating, and their commanding officer was recently given that title. I’d like to be able to face off to him as an equal.”

Admiral Chan blows out a heavy breath, but reaches into his desk for the paperwork. “You are insane for doing that. Is one Spirit’s disfavor not enough for you?”

Zhao shakes his head. “That boy is no Spirit. He’s a fraud and a hack. The musings of Earth Kingdom peasants and coin-hungry bards have no bearing on reality.”

Admiral Chan is as meticulous as he is efficient, writing out the letter that will inform command of the new status of the banished, disgraced man. He passes it over the desk and slams his brush back onto its tray hard enough for it to rattle as Zhao looks over the letter with a crooked smile. All it needs is Admiral Chan’s seal, and it will go through. “Well? Tell me.”

“Ah, not so fast,” Zhao says, which makes Chan want to burn that smug grin off of his face. “I also want the ability to speak in your name. I’m hunting the Avatar, and I need someone’s power to back me up as I gather the people to hunt him and to assist in your revenge.”

“Fine, whatever, yes,” Chan says, and stands up again, leaning over his desk. “Now, _ tell me, _ Captain Zhao.”

Zhao stands up from the couch and presses the letter back onto Chan’s desk. “You’ll be delighted to know that Tui and La have corporeal forms in this world,” he says. “I know where they are. I know what they look like. And I know how to kill them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *tosses as much worldbuilding, headcanons, exposition, and dialogue as I can into one chapter, racking up about 7k words*  
Also me: fuck it, let the snake talk too.
> 
> The Earth Kingdom is a mess in canon. I have taken many liberties. Technically, my headcanon fills in all of the gaps that canon left and also kinda explains why Ba Sing Se is so fucking Big.
> 
> Also, Bumi, why did you make your episode so much crack. I needed you to meet Aang so he could have the whole "fuck, I'm supposed to be old as shit and no one can relate to me anymore" realization and I had to just have Iroh send an advanced letter saying 'hey, can you tell the Avatar what the fuck is happening so he can at least have an intelligent conversation with my nephew when he comes hunting for blood'. Why are you such a chaos gremlin in canon. Sit down, old man.
> 
> Fun fact: Admiral Chan is a canon character, who we know nothing about, on account of only meeting his teenage son. I saw his wiki article, and I said it's free real estate.
> 
> I'm going to try to get another chapter out before/on my birthday on the 13th. Stay tuned.
> 
> Now, if you excuse me, I have 83 beautiful, lovely comments to respond to. Thank you guys so much for all of your support! We've cleared 30k hits now, which is completely and utterly awesome. Thank you!
> 
> [My Tumblr](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/)


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter, fair warning, is a little over 13k, and I'm just as confused as you are about it. Turns out everybody wanted to play. For clarity's sake, since having any POV covering what was basically just going to be what happened in canon did not want to happen, the first ~half of the episode "Imprisoned" proceeded roughly as canon did. Brain did not want to cooperate to just write down what happened in canon, so enjoy some tiny story scraps before the fun begins. 
> 
> I would like to thank tumblr user cosmicdisasteroid for providing the name Rina for Haru's mom, because canon didn't give her a name. Say what you will about A:TLA, but they are committed to keeping pretty much every mom dead, unnamed, missing, or unmentioned.

Katara rises out of the bushes, hands held up as nonthreatening as she can make them.

“Hi?” she hazards.

The earthbending boy runs.

-

The earthbending boy’s name is Haru, they learn. His town is under the Fire Nation’s thumb, they learn. If he bends, he’s in danger, they learn.

(The world is cruel, too. That they have learned. That they’ll have to learn again and again.)

They can sleep in the storeroom out back, they learn.

-

“Let’s face it - our track record sucks,” Sokka says sleepily, burrowing into his blankets. He’s chosen the spot closest to the door of the storehouse they’ve been allowed to use as lodging for the night. “We’re kind of really bad at not bringing catastrophe wherever we go.”

Katara reaches out of her blankets to smack Sokka’s head while Aang huddles up into a miserable shape behind her. He’s not wrong, but there’s a time and place for these kinds of things. Times after they’ve made it to somewhere safe from the Fire Nation and they can sit down and examine how much of their problems are coincidence and how many are the result of curses or disfavor.

Disfavor.

That’s a concept. That maybe, just maybe, she was never meant to find Aang. Never meant to travel with him. That she read the signs wrong. That Tui and La are seething after her.

She can’t stop thinking about it, actually, not even later, when the boys have both dropped off into sleep.

She gets out of her blankets and walks to the door, keeping her footsteps quiet and sure. Sokka wakes easy, after all.

Haru is outside, too, staring up at the freshly risen moon like she planned to. He’s not asking it any of the questions she wants to, but he looks up when she walks over.

It’s easy to talk to him. It’s easy to see her own grief in him. It’s easy to show her necklace and reminisce with a fellow child of this war with a complex relationship with their own element and own parents. It feels like it’s a sign, almost, being drawn here. It feels like maybe this is the universe telling her she isn’t cursed. That she isn’t alone.

They walk, and they talk, and Katara feels like she is scraping away old, raw terror from her bones the whole way.

Then there’s a crashing rumble from somewhere in the woods.

-

Later, she slips back into her blankets, feeling like she’s done something right.

-

Later, she wakes up with the others to the sound of sobbing from the main house.

Haru’s mother is crying, bent over herself and burying her tears in her skirts.

Haru is nowhere to be found.

Haru has been taken.

-

Later, shaken and forcing herself molecule by molecule to respect the wishes of Haru’s mother, Katara greets Appa with a pat on his nose, and they fly north.

-

“Did you hear?” The voices at the marketplace whisper, as Rina picks her rice and produce carefully out of the stall. Her shoulders hunch as the voices giggle and mutter behind her. “She’s got dirt in her blood. Thank Agni her kid snapped where someone could report it to the authorities.”

Five years ago, she would have been greeted with smiles as she purchased enough for a growing boy and his two loving parents. Yesterday, she would have been met with speculative glances as she haggled for enough rations for the one joy she still had and herself. Today, she is chased by whispers and snickers, and she buys only enough food for one.

“Did you hear?” The voices of the new arrivals and old friends alike murmur. “He tried to collapse one of our mines. Good riddance, I say!”

She swipes the tears from her cheeks with the no-nonsense motion she has long since learned and picks up her sack as she moves to give her payment, keeping it close to her chest. What once was a community of collective work and generosity has deteriorated in the past few years into a place where no one can trust their neighbors to not steal their food, swipe their coin, and sell out their sons. One must always watch out for wandering hands and loose tongues, in times like these.

“Did you hear?” The people she once called her own cackle behind her, with their new Fire Nation friends. “She raised one of  _ them _ beneath her roof for years. Couldn’t bear to put the thing down, I suppose.”

She hates the red flags atop the houses and she hates the soldiers on the docks and she hates the water that has taken everyone she still has away from her. She even hates the three children Haru brought home with him the day before, with conspicuous features and strange accents and bizarre gaits and white fur dusting their clothing.

They were a sign, she thinks. A sign that everything would go horribly, terribly wrong.

“Did you hear?” They say, and it does not matter if they whisper it or shout it from the rooftops, because she hears their words and they are poison in the drinking water. “The boy is in prison to rot, just like his father. I’m surprised they didn’t get rid of him right then and there.”

She grits her teeth as she remembers those strange children coming in from the barn once she started wailing, back into her house, in the morning. Their horror at what had happened to her boy. The way that the waterbender girl had promised to get him back. The way that the one who shared her features had balked at that. The way the one who did not share her features did not cover the blue tattoos over his skull or the autumnal colors wreathing him properly in his haste.

The way she had to lecture them, had to tear out her heart and write in the blood so they would understand that they could not save her family.

“Did you hear?”

The Fire Nation is many things, but let it not be said they are not meticulous. Their records are things of legends, next to their cruelty and efficiency. There is no doubt in Rina’s mind that her boy’s name is already written next to his father’s, and that they in turn are connected back to her home and business and friends. If any one of them disappeared from the prison rigs they are said to be held in, the price would be on her head and those of her neighbors, as well as Tyro’s closest friends on that vessel. They are leverage and most of them have nothing more that keeps them alive than that. She is not a body in one of their mines, so she is only a step above a body dead on the floor.

“Did you hear-”

Worse yet, would be the consequences if the Avatar himself broke them free. There may not be a town left, maybe no rig at all. If the boy could even do it. He couldn’t save the world for a century, who's to say he wouldn’t just get her family killed?

_ “Hunt the boy-” _ echoes through the square in a messy chorus of drunken voices shushed by the closest guards.

The boy who bleeds the autumn breeze and flees over the Southern seas, indeed. The snippets of songs and rumors were true, and he had stood, terrified, in front of her as she told them that if they even made an attempt to rescue those she loves, she would probably die.

It felt like something morbidly correct, to have the Spirit of the World as a scared boy wavering before her and offering her doom in return for someone else’s freedom.

“Did you-”

This morning, face to face with three children, Spirit-blessed or not, staring at her, afraid and guilty and even younger than Haru, she could not let them run off to risk themselves or her family for the barest chance at saving her loved ones at the cost of herself and her entire coal-dusted village. It was an impossibility to think they could take down something that held her husband away from her all of these years.

“Did-”

Now, in the village square, hearing the others demean her, call her blood dirty, call her son scum when before they would hail earthbenders just like him as the pillars of the community, she wishes she could call back those words. 

She wishes she could tell those three strange children, that Avatar and his two friends, to break the prisoners free and write their names in the sky. She knows how to hide decently. The man that sold her boy out doesn’t. The people whispering at her back don’t. Even if she couldn’t hide, even if she did die, then that would be a price worth paying for her family to walk the stones freely and to see these gossip mongers burning on the dirt beside her.

She takes what little solace she can in the knowledge that for every simpering, sneering voice that smears her and her family through the mud, there are five silent people that cannot express their regrets to her for fear of being arrested for sympathizing.

She takes what little solace she can in the memory of the white furred monster that dusted the children’s clothing and brought them as harbingers of this freshest destruction rising into the sky and heading north. 

She takes what little solace she can in the small smattering of beads and buttons and fabric the girl had left behind, as her pocket tore loose on the hinges of Rina’s door, forgotten in their rush to leave her house and her lecture on consequences behind, and now stuffed into one of Rina’s own pockets. 

She takes what little solace she can in her own survival.

“I’m sorry, Rina,” the vendor she counts her coin and paper money out to whispers, eyes darting over her shoulder to take in the gossiping crowds, giving the condolences in such a low tone that his lips barely move. He doesn’t want to be accused of anything. He slips an apple into her hand, skin slightly gnarled with age and splotched with red along one side, closing her grasp around it. “You deserve better than rumor.”

Rina gives him a grim nod in return and transfers the apple to a pocket in her dress so she can continue counting out the money in her palm.

“Did you hear?” someone whispers.

Her grip tightens on the coins with a sick chiming sound of discordance. 

What she wouldn’t trade away to call her words back, to damn them all. What she wouldn’t give to have her boys freely breathing the air these people are wasting with every word.

“Did you hear?” someone sings.

Her palm is sweaty as the paper money crinkles in her grasp.

What she wouldn’t give to bring her family back home for even a moment. What she wouldn’t give to see them running free against Kingdom soil.

“The Bandit Prince is coming,” they say.

Oh.

Rina freezes.

She tosses the words over in her mind like the waves of the sea she hates so much. She sinks her fingers back through her memory to the other gossip that has plagued the docks and her storefront. She sieves it all through her grief.

The Bandit Prince is not an Avatar that abandoned them all for a century. The Bandit Prince has almost three years of history, in which he has saved those from the Nation and the Kingdom equally. He has power. He has influence. He has a reputation.

She has something he may want.

She pulls the apple back out of her pocket and feels its weight in her hand. She feels the weight of the trinkets the Avatar’s friend had left behind. She feels the weight of the money crinkling and grinding in her palm.

Her hands clench into fists around their bounties, and her grip turns white and shaking. Her head darts up with unnerving speed to meet the worried eyes of the vendor. “Maybe I do deserve better than rumor,” she rasps, voice thick and broken from her mourning, “but it will have to do.”

She leaves behind the whispering and her bag of food at the docks, one hand wrapped around the apple and the other around the money crinkling and chiming in her grasp. She does not walk home. She does not return to her store. She moves southwest, toward where the ocean crashes unrestrained and untamed against the rocks.

Her grief burns in her chest, and the ashes are fury.

-

Katara reaches into her pocket and groans when she finds it empty and that her fingers are going through the hole in the bottom. All of her good sewing supplies were in there. She’ll need to get more before long.

Sokka looks up from where he’s sharpening one of his fans and takes in her newest problem with a groan of his own. Keeping clothes insulated and whole was always a concern down South, and it’ll be even worse up North, where it will be darker and colder this time of year.

Aang doesn’t look up from where he’s curled up, head over his knees, watching the land pass by far below.

It must be rough for him, when all of his help always somehow turns into harm. When his very presence around anyone seems to bring tragedy and calamity.

Katara’s not sure if that’s right or not. Maybe it’s her. Maybe it’s Sokka. Maybe it’s just all of them. Whatever it is, she’s almost certain it’s not just bad luck at this point. It being her fault seems more and more likely.

Haru made his choice to save that old man. Aang was nowhere nearby. Katara was the one that pleaded with Haru to move those rocks, not him. Katara was the one who could only see Gran-Gran’s husband slowly wheezing to death in the elderly miner. Katara was the one that panicked and pleaded with Haru to make what seemed to be, as the time, the right choice.

Haru is the one paying for it, not her.

This whole mission seems cursed.

She’ll pray for Haru’s safety in a few days, when the solstice starts and Tui is strong. When she can plead for forgiveness for whatever she did, whatever any of them did, to make this guilt their constant companion.

She hopes he makes it free someday. She hopes some prayer can reach some Spirit that can fix what she broke.

-

Three sharp, twisting, jagged smiles split the faces of three identical women as they call out to their eldest brother and their youngest nephew and their most abruptly changed child finally ripped from his careful chrysalis. For justice of some sort, perhaps. For vengeance of some sort, perhaps. For the plight of their children trapped upon the waves, eating away at their skins and starved for their element.

They call, in flint and steel and the smoldering ground, hand layered over hand as they guide the grasp of this final matriarch of a suffering bloodline.

-

It’s the smell of ash that wakes Zuko up.

It cuts through the hazy fog of sleep and the choking thickness that’s been haunting his mind ever since he almost did to a village militia of people his own age what the Avatar did a crew of trained adult soldiers.

It never feels very good to let go like that and surrender to instinct. It always takes a bit to feel comfortable in his own skin again. He’s never let go as much as he wound up doing on Kyoshi Island. He’s still tired from it, and it compounds badly with the guilt and shame from nearly killing a group of teens to make him want to sleep for a week or two. That’s not even mentioning what he put his body through back in the Southern Sea.

He really dislikes the feeling that follows him for too many days after. That creeping exhaustion and creeping flesh.

It always feels like he is trying to heal over a wound that’s already scarred closed and break it open all at once. As though the blazing cracks that burnt over all of his skin are still fighting to remain closed and dead but also shatter and consume him at the same time. It’s a… very bad feeling, to put it mildly.

Not bad enough, though, that the twisting scent of this soot doesn’t call him free of the safety of sleep.

He moves in one motion, twisting his way free of his hammock and snatching the closest rope to hang while he tilts his head to work out where it’s coming from.

Ash is not an unfamiliar scent. It has variety, of course- campfire smoke smells different from a wildfire, which smells different from coal smoke, which smells different from firebending.

But even on this wooden ship, it has never made him jerk awake quite like this. Everyone that can start a fire on this ship knows how to put it out just as quickly. Following the coast and skirting around the colonies as they do, it’s also fairly common to smell the ash of warships, battalions, towns, and factories. This should be no different.

But it is. It is different, and it is different in a way he has felt many times over the past few exiled years that he can only now completely identify for what it is, having heard it tell him a story and set braids against his scalp.

It wraps around him, coaxing him forward in a many-jointed, thin-limbed grasp, clawing carefully through his hair and watching him with a flame-maned, one-eyed gaze.

Agni coaxes him forward for this, towards flames that are always lit in desperation. Zuko has followed the scent to burning homes and blazing forests, to hopeless children curled around feeble flames. He doesn’t know what he’s following in this case, but it lies ahead and toward the coast, where the Avatar may yet still be.

He knows there are folk tales about him, as much as he shivers beneath that idea. He knows that word of him - of the strange, half-faced once-prince that follows desperation and destruction with a handful of flame and the goading, guiding whispers of Spirits following him - has made its way across the continent.

He gets the sudden, sinking feeling, in tandem with the smoke curling into a hundred-jointed hand that beckons him toward the dim glow of fire on the coastline, that this will become another whispered story on his periphery.

“Crewman,” he calls out.

Bo wrangles his way to a nearby rope in record time and salutes sharply even as he hangs upside-down. “Yessir! Glad to see you verbal and functioning again, by the way.”

Zuko sighs lightly and stretches out his shoulderblades a little as they protest at their stiffness. “Get someone to take us toward the firelight on the coast. I’ll be taking the skiff out. Someone is asking for help.”

Bo huffs out a sigh of his own and swings himself upright. “Figures,” he mutters as he repositions himself and squints out at the coast to try and see a tiny glimpse of firelight in the middle of this bright day, only barely loud enough to not be eaten by the coastal winds. “No breaks for him, huh? Just depression naps chased with Spirit-appointed missions back to back?” He clears his throat and talks noticeably louder, “Well, I can’t see anything, but the helmsman has better eyes than me. I’ll get right on that.”

He picks his way free of his perch and returns to the deck before Zuko can open his mouth to ask any questions. Namely,  _ what? _ and- well, pretty much just that.

Zuko shakes his head to clear the rest of the fog from his skull and drops down as well, slinking to the prow and tilting his head at the distant, tiny gleam of desperate firelight that pulls and prods him closer. His skin crawls again, in the most distinctly uncomfortable but not yet painful sensation he’s ever felt. This episode is particularly bad.

“Whatever is happening,” a voice to his side announces, “I’d prefer to stay on the boat if that’s an option. Unless you really need someone for earthbending.”

Zuko turns his head to regard Rookie, sitting on the deck next to him with a scabbed-over cut on his cheek, a lap full of rocks, and a small, eerily realistic clay dragon with rusted blood patched over one eye wrapped around his shoulders. That bit is… new. He didn’t have that last time Zuko checked.

“Fair enough,” Zuko allows. His skin crawls with the memory of  _ why  _ exactly the earthbender would rather stay on the ocean with a few rocks rather than set foot on land. He looks away so he can stop seeing the evidence, too, still red and irritated and free of bandages.

The fog of exhaustion and creeping guilt is seeping back, now that the immediacy of the call of the smoke is gone, and it just makes the creeping shudders over his skin worse. If there wasn’t someone on their last hope feeding it into the fire guiding him forward, he’d just go back up to his hammock and sleep a little more until the world made more sense again and his own flesh stopped rebelling. He’s done that before, and it sometimes worked out just fine. He rubs the bridge of his nose as a headache starts to creep up behind it.

He’s a little more than startled when something starts clawing its way up his leg, dragging itself upward with dulled talons to settle around his neck loosely, over where the worst of the cracks waver uncertainly. His eyes dart to Rookie, who’s swaying lightly against the deck while his arms make the traditionally harsh movements or earth or firebending, squinting as he monitors the progress of Zuko’s new hanger-on. His shoulders are empty now.

“There,” Rookie says decisively, pulling his arms around his rocks again and shuffling a little to turn more toward where Zuko was looking before. “You looked like you needed it more than me.”

Zuko moves his hand up hesitantly to meet the roughly scaled texture of the clay dragon’s snout. The weight is- admittedly, it’s really nice, actually. It’s odd, yeah, but it’s… it’s comforting? It’s hard to explain any kinds of emotions right now, but it’s not negative, which is a notable improvement. “Thank you,” he whispers, uncertain if even that much can be heard over the wind.

Rookie nods anyway.

The course of the ship steadily corrects closer to the distant firelight. Agni’s ash fingers twist through the sky and beckon him onward.

-

Rina tosses another thin piece of paper money into the fire, keeping her eyes on the flames and her ears listening to the crash of the ocean before her. This is the last of her supply kept from the tax collectors. She hopes her last few notes will be enough to settle the restless ghosts of her family and call out over the waves.

She does not pray to anything these days. Hasn’t since she was young. Even when she did, it was never to the staring eye of the enemy’s god. Now, it is her best, last option.

She lit the flames with desperation, just as the tales say she should. In old times, Agni might have sent an animal to guide her elsewhere to find a purpose, or would just ignore the plea of a poor Earth Kingdom woman. Now, there is a boy with half of a face and every blessing understood by mortals that is said to answer the call of any who beckon when he is near.

She splits the apple in half, placing each piece on top of her lap, flanking her other meager offerings. Looking at them now, she cannot help but think they are too small, despite the grieving beast that thrums in her chest telling her they are enough. The same mourning creature that swallowed stories to fill the emptiness within it.

A branch snaps behind her, and she does not look up. It is either her salvation or her doom, and she isn’t overly picky about which one finds her first. She keeps her eyes on the fire and her hands passively atop her lap, and she does not so much as twitch when nearly silent footsteps pace to sit on a rock to her left.

There are no words, no sound at all except for the crashing waves and crackling fire, as she takes up a half of the apple and offers it to her visitor, eyes only shifting between the blaze and the trinkets on her lap. Her hand does not shake as she presents her offering, though the hand curled in her lap does.

_ If you mean to deal with a Spirit, do not look at them until your offering has been accepted, _ her mother’s voice echoes from somewhere in her skull.  _ Do not meet its eyes until you have both eaten, until you are both equals. Only then can you make a deal without selling more than you meant. _

A human shaped hand that is too warm to belong to anything that isn’t of Agni’s ghosts over her own as it accepts the offering. She takes her arm back slowly, carefully, wary of any retaliation for moving swifter. The half of the apple left for her is perfectly split, just like its twin in the Spirit’s hand must be, with half pale green and the other half splotched red.

It tastes like nothing in her mouth. It is mealy and rough and bland, and if it wasn’t a gesture of sympathy from the vendor she never would have purchased it, but it is still food. More than that, it is salvation. That makes it the sweetest thing she has had in many years.

As one, both her and her visitor cast their apple seeds into the fire.

Only then does Rina look up from the careful corridor of sight she has allowed herself.

The Bandit Prince is exactly as she expected, and nothing like it all at once. 

He does not have the skewed proportions and inhuman features common in most depictions of Spirits. He looks a little like Haru, except younger, shorter, leaner, and undeniably an ashmaker. His unhidden eye is a bright, terrible gold that almost seems to sear more than the fire before Rina. His soot-black hair is messy and long, pulled partially back into a style that seems more like something from the Kingdom than from the Nation. 

If not for that cloth, with something glowing from within, if not for the way the campfire smoke curls around his limbs like an embrace, if not for the earthen dragon curled around his neck and ensuring she is met with three staring eyes, she would never know the boy was a Spirit.

And then he speaks.

“Agni tells me you want to make a deal,” he says, voice raspy and rumbling, eye unblinking and expression unmoving, seeming more like the lifeless dragon wreathing his shoulders than a living being.

There is something so benignly terrifying about that sentence.

Rina’s mouth moves before she can even think, “Yes.”

The Bandit Prince tilts his head, and then reaches his hands up with a deceptively slow glide, undoing the knot at the back of his head and pulling away the veil embroidered with the colors of the four elements.

The skin beneath is red and mottled, pulling up half of his mouth into a grimace and the skin around his golden, slit-pupiled eye down into a glare. It is deep and gnarled, shiny and rough, and it crawls over his side like a disease. She has only ever seen damage like that on corpses.

It makes his statement from before all the more chilling. The idea that Agni would deign to speak with one his flames burnt so badly. The idea that the singular, staring god of the enemy would whisper in the ear of one his people nearly destroyed. That the favor of the sun lies with one so visibly done a disfavor by his element.

“What do you offer?” he asks, and the raspy rumble seems to have a dozen tones humming under it, singing and screaming and laughing and crying. Like a forest of smoke-burnt birds crying out for justice. She would swear that the eyes of the dragon wrapping him move to stare at her all the more intently. The shadows from the leaves above cut his skin into shadow and light, and they look remarkably like scales.

Rina gathers her offerings up from her lap. The cloth, the beads, the buttons. The things left behind by the Avatar’s companion. The things left behind by the friend of the Bandit Prince’s enemy. She extends them out with the same unshaking hand that gave him his half of the apple, and his eyes finally stop staring into her soul to curiously consider her new sacrifice. “My payment,” she says, unable to stop her voice from wavering. “They were left behind by the herd you hunt.”

His fingers ghost over them too, just as they had her first offering, and then he jerks his hand back. His sunlight eyes, fever-bright, meet hers, and the smoke wreathing his limbs swirls anew, joining with the sea spray until the two are indistinguishable as they hound the body of this fresh young Spirit. Beneath the press of those creeping, nebulous bonds, he seems small.

“What do you want in return?” he asks.

He seems so desperately young beneath the weight of the spindrift and soot. If she recalls her tales properly, he’s younger than Haru. If she recalls the words sung through the market, the Spirits are pushing him ever forward towards the task she is offering assistance with. If she recalls her sympathy, she can pity him for that much.

“I want my family,” she says, and her voice does not waver this time. There is smoke in her throat and the bland taste of her gesture of equivalence stuck on her teeth. “Your Nation took them from me and sent them to work out on the sea. I want them back.”

The noon sun streaks through the gauzy smoke around the Bandit Prince, lighting it up in shimmering, surreal luminosity to match the blaze of his eyes. The dragon on his neck seems like it curls into his throat, to either protect or bite down in a mercy kill.

For a moment, it seems like he is on fire, as though he is the one burning and not the fire before her, as though her desperate flames are rising up from the leaf-litter ground and catching him alight, the dappled shadows of scales remaining inked on his skin.

And then the moment is gone, and he just looks tired.

“Deal,” he says.

-

A guardsman, one of the fresh-blooded recruits that wouldn’t know a prison break from a prisoner suicide, breaks into the Warden’s office at a dead run. The Warden quietly begins to mentally draft papers apologizing to this idiot’s family for his accidental horrible burns and tumble over the rig’s rail.

The boy stutters out nonsense while pointing weakly back the way he came.

“Use your words,” the Warden says, rolling his wrists in case he had to do something unpleasant to the recruit. They’re all mutts these days anyway, with mud they can’t scrub clean of their blood, even with fire. Barely any better than the scum they’re guarding.

“Th- there’s one o-of our- our ships coming in to dock from th- the east,” the guard stumbles over his words.

Ah yes, the most important memo ever given to a commanding officer: a ship from the fleet he supplies fuel and repairs to is coming to dock at his floating prison rig from which he supplies those products and services. Absolutely riveting stuff. If he wasn’t in such a good mood from getting more fresh meat today to break beneath his whip and words, the boy would already be on his way over the railing. Instead, he plays along just for a few more seconds, willing to see where this goes.

“Pray tell,” the Warden drawls slowly, “why do you think that is a problem? More specifically, my problem?”

The boy gulps. “It’s- uh-” he starts slowly backing away towards the door, which means he has somehow developed survival instincts in the past ten seconds. “It’s a wooden ship? The wooden ship? The- the  _ Siren?” _

The Warden freezes where he sits at his desk.

-

Agni, Zuko just wants to sleep. That horrible crawling sensation on his skin has only gotten worse the longer he’s been awake and moving, and the frantic drumbeat sensation of a freshly-made deal pounds against his mind insistently.

The woman had been careful in her wording when she spoke her family’s names. It’s not like he can actually do anything with them, anyway. He’s an errand boy, not a trickster Spirit. But she had been careful and thorough, which means he knows exactly who he is looking for.

There is a part of him, untouched by the years of struggle and the memories of ancient massacres spilling into fresh ones, that wants to burn this whole rig to the ground and take all of the miserable, hopeless people out of the blazing wreckage and send them home. The part of him that craves a child’s justice of what should be right in the face of the consequences. It’s a part of him he wishes he had more of, and a part of him he hopes he won’t lose any more than he already has.

He is looking for two among the dozens of prisoners hunched over metalwork, far from the land that sings in their bones. Only two. Among the throng of suffering. He could free them, he could, he could, he could burn this place and send them off-

But, no. This is already dangerous enough. This is already enough of a risk. If he frees everyone, they could all go home to a burnt house and charred corpses where their families and friends were.

He hates this. He’s so tired. The plodding beat of his promise sparks unevenly in his skull, like Agni’s thousand-jointed fingers are drumming inside of his head.

But he stands tall, he keeps his left eye covered, and he covers the scales that still want to crawl over his neck with the clay dragon.

Rookie is next to him, since he’s an integral part of this plan. His hands are behind his back to hide how they’re shaking. He didn’t complain when Zuko asked him to act as a cover for this, but Zuko knows that doesn’t mean much from a soldier.

He knows that a large portion of the crew followed him this far onto the rig. He cannot count how many right now, because he has to keep facing forward and seeming implacable, because otherwise he might just fall flat on his face.

However many, it must be an intimidating amount, because the Warden looks exceptionally nervous.

“Warden, I’m here to relieve you of two of your prisoners,” he says, and hopes he doesn’t sound as exhausted as he feels.

The Warden shifts on his feet but thrusts his chin into the air imperiously. Without even looking, Zuko knows that at least half of the people behind him, however many there are, are entering into very casual firebending stances.

“I don’t need to give you anything,” the Warden says, and his voice only shakes on the last few syllables. “You’re an exile.”

Yeah. Thanks. Helpful. Zuko definitely didn’t know this before. What a surprise! Exiled? Wow. Shocking.

He just wants to sleep again, soon, without Agni looming over his shoulder, using him as an intermediary for this deal.

“I don’t care if I’m exiled,” Zuko says slowly, which is a false statement, not that the Warden knows it, “I just need two of your  _ many _ prisoners and I’ll leave you be.”

The Warden opens his mouth again, probably to argue.

“Do you really want to interfere in Agni’s business?” Zuko says, coasting smoothly on the sort of hysteric calm that only comes when he is completely exhausted. Rookie shifts uncomfortably.

The Warden shuts his mouth, and then seems to think about it and weigh his options before he talks again. “What purpose do you require two of  _ my  _ workers for?”

Well, well, well. Looks like there’s only so many times Zuko can pull the Agni card on someone and have them actually listen meaningfully, which for this man means no times at all.

It’s a good thing he has an excuse already prepped and also the weight of the clay dragon around his neck keeping him civil, because otherwise he’s pretty sure he would just set something on fire and then leave with what he wanted while they dealt with that particular issue.

“I’ve recently acquired a colony bender on board my vessel,” he says, with a loose gesture toward Rookie. “He needs two earthbending teachers- a master and a learned student, so he can learn properly.”

The Warden looks smug at that. “You’ve got yourself a pet earthworm, then?” he says, completely ignoring Rookie altogether and talking to Zuko like he’s acquired a dog of some sort. “And to think, your crew was so pure before. I didn’t know an exiled  _ legend _ like you would consort with the enemy. Dirt gets everywhere, you know.” He looks at Rookie in vague, bored contempt, like he’s looking at a particularly disgusting chair. “And it never leaves blood.”

Oh, whatever. Zuko gives up. His scar hurts, and his neck hurts, and his back hurts, and he’s so tired, and he has so many little tiny fish hooks of Spiritual influence trying to tug him in a thousand different directions.

“Crewman, I’ll let you respond,” he calls, and keeps his eyes forward as the deck starts creaking and the dragon around his neck starts shifting.

With disturbing swiftness, the dragon unspools around his shoulders and leaps onto the deck with a wet, creaking thud. It bears its sharpened teeth toward the Warden and creeps forward with juddering, swirling motions.

For something as stubborn as earth, it moves pretty fluidly, with a few strange gestures turning the sculpture more blocky and harsh than it is while the creation is stationary. Regardless of how fluid or blocky it is, though, it is just to the left of the movements of a living creature, which makes it much more compelling to watch it twist and flow and shudder closer to the Warden, who is now taking a few steps backward.

“If you still think you’re qualified to discuss my choices in my crew and still believe you can stop me from acquiring your prisoners, I can bring my Uncle here too and let him discuss it with you,” Zuko offers. “He isn’t an exile.”

The Warden pales at that, and finally steps aside.

“Thank you for your cooperation,” Zuko says, headache pounding another step higher. He turns slightly and motions Rookie forward with a nod of his head.

The clay dragon jaunts its unnatural gait back to Zuko, clambering back up his coat until it lies snugly around his shoulders again and goes still. 

Zuko, exhausted but glad to nearly be done with this, pushes past the Warden and continues his hunt, followed by his silent, nervous, earthbender shadow. The drumbeat deal is almost done.

Once it’s done, he can sleep.

-

The Prince knows exactly who he’s looking for. Rookie is just there as a convenient excuse.

Still, as they move past prisoners hunched over metalwork, shoulders bent and backs pale and lumpy with scar tissue, Rookie feels bile rise up in his chest.

He knows why they aren’t staging an entire prison break. He knows that it would lead to countless deaths, when done incorrectly. He knows that they cannot make the choice to condemn the places these men came from to death as the soldiers tear the villages apart looking for the escapees and exacting revenge.

But, at the same time, he knows the men here can make that choice for themselves.

Rookie made that same choice a week or so ago. He doesn’t regret it. After a lifetime of being told his life was best served stomped under someone’s boots, being given free reign to get up and choose his own path has made him fully appreciate, for the first time in his life, what true freedom feels like.

The problem with firebenders is that they always tend to make their decisions in terms of life and death, with little in between. A life lived in suffering for a firebender is a guttering flame, but it is still a flame. A life given on its own terms leaves behind proud ash, but it is still soot. A flame is either lit or it isn’t. It doesn’t matter how much light it was able to give while it burnt. It doesn’t matter how much it lived in terrified agony while it smoldered.

Rookie isn’t a firebender. He’s an earthbender. A life lived in suffering is a badly tilled piece of soil that won’t grow anything. A life given on its own terms leaves behind something for the worms to eat. The dirt doesn’t give a shit about anything that lives on top of it, just that it doesn’t spread poison into the soil and that it decays someday into something nice to feed it. It’s better to die working to end suffering than live working to perpetuate it.

So the Prince might be willing to leave them here, because he thinks a life lived is better than a life lost, but Rookie knows that to these men, to all of his old classmates, to every enemy earthbender he’s ever been trained to face, a life lost well is better than a life lived badly. It’s not like they could set up a poll, though, and publicly ask them how many would be willing to maybe lose their lives or the lives of their family so they could get the hell off of here.

There may be more earthbenders than Nation personnel onboard, but they are all sallow and weak from this long away from land, from soil and stone. They can’t fight back physically, and their element is far from them.

There are protocols on these sorts of places. An old crewmate of his, that hated him for the dirt in his bones, told him about the conditions on these sorts of rigs in excruciating detail, once, to make him squirm. In the event of an outside force attempting to break prisoners out of the rig, the priority of the guards isn’t to defend from the attacking force. It’s to kill the prisoners. With the prisoners as weak as they are, it’d be like drowning fox-kittens.

They are suffering, though. In the short time he’s been on the Prince’s crew and been allowed to actually think for what seems to be the first time in years, he’s decided that’s the one thing he can’t abide by.

They are suffering beneath the whip, beneath the scorn, beneath the starvation, beneath the sea-sickness of land left far behind, beneath the coal-smoke in the sky-

Oh.

Coal is strange, in earthbending. No one really knows how it was made, only that it was stuck in the earth for long enough to count as close enough to bend. But for earthbenders - who need to be near solid ground or get sick - whatever it’s made of doesn’t count enough for it to be physiologically considered ground. Rookie has served on a few steamers. He’s passed out on a few of them too, even surrounded by improperly stored coal.

Coal may not help with the sea-sickness earthbenders get from being away from stone and dirt, but it is still bendable. On a ship with only coal on it, earthbenders can get sick just like they would on a ship with no coal whatsoever. It might be enough for them to think there’s no earth at all. No weapons. Nothing they can use to break free.

His next few steps as he follows after the Prince are heavier, searching, stomping, and-

There’s the coal storage. Deep in the ship, where only those who trained to attune themselves to it and were actively searching could find it. It’s far away, sure, but earthbenders can control rocks that are midair. Pulling up what will be the only earth around for a mile once their ship leaves with its clay and rocks on board will be easy enough to any man desperate enough to put every screaming inch of his body into commanding it to rise.

Rookie means to keep walking, to keep following as the Prince blazes a trail against the deck of the ship, searching and hunting. 

He means to.

But there is something creeping up his spine and pounding in his bones that tells him to turn to a man about as old as the Captain, hunched over as he hammers away at a sheet of metal plating. He looks healthier than many aboard, but also more nauseous, and he doesn’t complete his work with the same efficiency as everyone else. Rookie has had enough experience as a- well, a rookie, to know what a somewhat new arrival onboard an earthless vessel looks like.

That feeling up his spine and in his very core intensifies.

“You know when to rise up, don’t you?” he asks, quiet enough that the sound of metal scraping and banging nearly swallows his words. He asks his question and he has no idea why.

The old man pauses and looks up, eyes wary and hard as he takes in the Nation kit Rookie has on, but softening at the callouses on his fingers, the five-rayed rising sun symbol of the  _ Siren _ embroidered clumsily onto the collar of his undershirt, and the Kingdom green of his eyes. The man keeps a tight grip on his hammer, but he nods.

The man has earth in his bones too, and whether it’s a boy from the colonies or an old man from the Kingdom, every earthbender knows the power of rising, of future tidings, of mountains, of Parvata. The mountain bows to no one, and any that try to conquer it can have only as long as the mountain allows. When the time is right, the mountain rises up, the peak crashes down, and the conquerors are rubble.

Fire burns bright and hot, but it burns quickly. The earth shifts slowly and incrementally, but it plays the long game. If there is anyone who should decide when they can break free, it should be the ones beneath the chains.

If Rookie was just a tad more observant, or a little more used to the subtleties that the Spirits use, he would know that the thrumming of the earth in his bones - the weight at his spine nudging him forward to say or do anything but follow after the back of a commanding officer - was the guiding hand of the Triple Spirits.

But he’s not, so he doesn’t.

Instead, without knowing why he’s doing this, with the sort of resigned panic flitting around in the back rooms of his skull that he’s gotten used to coexisting with these past few weeks, he says, “I know how you can break free.”

The man’s shoulders press close to his body, but he sets his hammer down. He doesn’t say anything, but he’s listening.

Wordlessly, Rookie shifts, reaches, and pulls.

Out of the air vent nearby, a tiny chunk of coal shoots out and collides with his palm.

The old man takes that in, then raises his own hand, with its gnarled joints and scarred fingertips, and calls that chunk into his own fist.

Rookie’s palm is stained black, like fertile dirt and inked names. The invisible hands pushing him forward slip away silently.

The old man nods.

-

The boy with half of a face and a dragon statue curled around his shoulder had worked his way across the rig to the both of them without a single pause. He had called them by name without a single pause. He then led them off of the prison rig without a single pause. 

It was an exercise in terrifying, unstoppable motion, and now that the wooden ship is completely disconnected from the rig and steadily moving back to the mainland, that motion has completely ceased.

The boy with half of a face is sitting directly on the deck, slumped back against the railing with his eyes closed and his strange clay statue hiding its scaled face under his chin.

Tyro does not know what he’s supposed to do. He and his son are still wearing their prison garb. Haru still has one shackle around his ankle. No one has given them any orders, or taken them to a brig of any sort.

The terrifying escort that the boy with half a face had behind him when he brought the both of them back has dispersed in all directions now that they’re on wood instead of metal. There’s an ashmaker boy that doesn’t seem much older than Haru forty feet in the air, tangled in the ropes above like it’s normal to be that far off of solid ground, watching a group of adult ashmakers drill something disturbingly unlike firebending by the prow with impressive results.

There’s also a kid in ashmaker colors the same age as Haru who had followed the boy with half a face onto the ship, with skin a shade too dark to have nothing but soot in his heart and a long, partially healed gash over his face. He’s sitting right next to the boy with half of a face and holding onto a few rocks like they’re gold.

Tyro can’t help but feel that he’s missed a lot during the past five years. Because he does not understand any of this strange tableau.

Tyro watches, morbidly curious, as the kid takes a long look at his companion, and then raises his hand. He rolls his shoulders and jabs his elbow back. The sculpture around the neck of the boy with half of a face shifts off of his shoulders in a motion very close to realistic but very importantly not, curling up on his lap instead of his shoulders within the space of a few seconds and taking some of the weight off of the boy’s back.

No one else seems to notice this blatant act of earthbending. No one seems to care. Tyro used to do hesitant business with some of the colonies, and he’s seen what the Nation does to their own blood when enough dirt gets mixed in. This is definitely not that.

There are averted eyes and broken noses. There is punishment and screaming, there is food thrown, there’s a kid limping home and everyone hurling insults at her for bleeding over their precious colony soil.

There is not this complete ease with an earthbender on board, bending around someone who has to be important. It seems impossible.

Haru, his boy, so big and grown up now, is staring too. The very thing that got him arrested and sent to the rig he’s leaving behind is taking place in full view of everyone, and no one other than them seems to notice how simply revolutionary that is.

Tyro shakes his head mutely, struggling to come up with the words, unsure if he should even say any of them. “I… I didn’t think the Nation let your kind bend very often.”

The kid jumps, eyes shooting over to them. He laughs nervously. “The Nation didn’t,” he hedges after a few moments of awkward silence. “Tried to civilize and control my bending enough so I wouldn’t get killed by friendly fire immediately. There’s not a lot of room to explore bending. But, uh,” he nods toward the boy with half a face who’s completely unconscious, “the Prince does. He let me loose on a stomping ground last week. And, um-” he gestures to the cut on his face- “when the locals disagreed with my general presence, the Prince disagreed with them. Vehemently. It was… definitely an experience. Changed my mind about a lot of things. Still is. The Prince tends to do that, I think.”

Tyro can hear the capital letter in that title. He doesn’t know how he should feel about that.

Haru takes a cautious step forward, now that he’s recognized a kindred spirit. “How long have you been serving?” His boy had wanted to join the militia, five years ago. Tyro doesn’t know if he’s given up on that dream yet or not.

The kid shrugs. “Three years total?” He dismisses the number with a hand gesture that makes the dragon sculpture twist around a little. “I’m an outlier. Most colony benders don’t make it to bootcamp, and three-quarters are dead a year into service.”

Triple Spirits, there’s horror enough in that sentence without it being spoken by someone just as old as his boy.

“But, if you mean on this vessel,” the kid continues, “then I’ve been here for about two weeks.”

Tyro balks at that. “What?”

The ashmaker forty feet up drops a disconcerting height before slinging himself into a comfortable roost only a few feet off of the deck. “It’s been an eventful two weeks,” the new arrival offers, tone bright and cheerful, and the colony bender sinks back against the railing in the universal sign for ‘oh, thank Agni someone else is here to talk instead of me’. 

Haru takes a few quick steps back, shackled leg jangling, nearly falling over from the ashmaker’s sudden, alarming descent.

“Hi!” The ashmaker says with a little wave. “It’s nice to meet you. I just realized that he-” the ashmaker motions toward the Prince- “dropped out before he could tell you anything, but that’s fine. Your family matriarch made a deal with the Prince for your safe return, so here we are. Returning you. Safely. Please leave a positive review, because again, it’s been a very eventful two weeks and the Prince is trying his best.”

Tyro’s shoulders curl under the unstoppable tide of words.

“Ensign Bo, stop messing with our passengers,” a dry, authoritative voice calls out, as yet another ashmaker enters onto the scene. This one has a gold insignia on his uniform, though, and both of the others immediately salute, which means that he’s in charge.

Tyro bows immediately and drags Haru with him. He’s just got his boy back, he’s not going to lose him again because some Nation official thought he was being uppity.

“You don’t have to do that,” the man says, a little more tired and a lot less dry. “I hold no authority over you. You’re here as the Prince’s guests for as long as it takes us to make it to the mainland and return you back to your wife.”

A man with enough authority to command a ship with royalty on board, claiming none over them. An ashmaker with an insignia and enough age on him to have a lot of earthbender blood on his hands. And he is telling Tyro he doesn’t have to bow. He is telling Tyro that he is bringing him, an earthbender, and his earthbender son back to his wife.

None of it makes sense.

Nothing Tyro knows about the Nation seems to hold true here. Not the way they bend, not the way they act, not the way they treat earthbenders, none of it.

Tyro moves out of his bow slowly, as much a matter of hesitance and courtesy as it is because of his back.

The man inclines his head once he makes eye contact, and his eyes flicker across the prison wear. He pauses when he catches sight of the shackle on Haru’s ankle, and then shifts into a strange firebending stance.

Tyro, heart in his throat, flinches back as the man moves, closing his eyes and allowing himself to grieve for the short amount of time he had his son back-

Instead of screaming, instead of the smell of flesh burning as Tyro loses his son for whatever perceived slight the Fire Nation man had seen, there is the small, deep,  _ thunk _ of metal hitting wood.

Tyro pries open his eyes to find the shackle on the floor, split perfectly in two with the end of them bright red. Haru is standing stock still, staring at his unmarred, freed foot.

“Some of our crew served as prisoners of war before they joined with us,” the man says, pleasantly, hands clasped behind his back and posture perfect as though he didn’t just burn a Kingdom boy’s shackles straight off of him, “so we’re not overly fond of chains. I’d keep the metal, if I were you, though. The stuff that once bound you tends to be the best to prevent that from happening again, once it’s melted down and reshaped. Or so I’ve heard.”

Haru makes no move to lean down and pick it up, still staring at his ankle.

Tyro slowly straightens from his protective curl, a thousand questions burning somewhere in his chest, and he can’t help but ask at least one of them. “You- your crew  _ are  _ Fire Nation, correct?”

The man quirks his lips in the smallest, thinnest smile Tyro has ever seen. “The paperwork says we are. The sails say we are. Our armor says we are.”

He turns and leaves before Tyro realizes that that’s not really an answer to his question.

After all, all of what he said was true. But their actions do not say they are Fire Nation, and that is-

Well, it’s something, alright. Whether it’s terrifying, humbling, exciting, suspicious, or all four, he doesn’t know.

Tyro really did miss a lot while he was gone.

-

Zuko wakes - or perhaps he doesn’t - floating.

For a long time, he stares. Up and up and up, at the darkness beckoning around him. The stars - countless stars, unreadable and infinite - streaming the black sky with bright dots of light.

And then gently, ever so gently, he sinks his weight forward, until he stands, and the whole infinite reaches of light stretch around him. There is no floor. There is no ceiling. Seemingly, he stands on nothing, just endless darkness. Cold and black. Bright and undeniable.

He stands - or perhaps he doesn’t - on a contradiction.

And then he falls.

Down-

Into darkness. Endless darkness, tripping and spinning out into infinity, with no stars to light the way.

There is no time for him to get his bearings before the voice echoes out. There are no words that could ever describe it.

“Break your deal,” it orders. “Kill the old man.”

It is loud, and it booms, but it is as quiet as a mouse all at once. It is not contradiction personified, and it is not chaos, but there is both within it, with peace and harmony snaking through it as old memories. There is nothing that can be said of it that isn’t true and false at the same time.

Zuko-

Zuko just stares into the nothingness, and tries to comprehend what to even say.

He’s still tired. He’s asleep and he’s still tired and-

And there is an indescribable voice telling him to break an old woman’s trust, to break her bond, to kill a broken old man that just got his life back, and it means nothing.

It’s just a voice in the darkness. It’s just asking an impossible task of him. He owes it nothing.

He’s getting really sick of this shit.

“No?” he says. And then, more certain, louder, “No. I don’t know what your goal is but I won’t kill an innocent man just because someone I don’t know told me to.”

There’s a very long, very tense silence that follows his words.

“Well,” the voice murmurs, finally. “You have no idea how long I’ve waited for someone to do that.”

In the darkness, the infinite darkness spilling into eternity, something clacks and clatters and slithers across the ground.

“Up you get,” the voice declares. “You have a deal to keep.”

He rises.

Up-

-

Rina does not care about composure as she runs over the sand, nearly tripping in her haste to get to her family. Her husband and her son both catch her as she throws herself to them, arms wrapping around them both as though she can hold them to her side forever and never see them leave again. Her bags of belongings are left forgotten in the sand.

They hug her back twice as fiercely, holding her close as she cries softly into their shoulders. It has been so long since she could hold them both like this. Her son has become a man since she could last do this. Five long years. Five long, lost years of her husband, in which her son was angry and desperate and so very good even for all of the hurt he had locked up deep inside himself. In which she had to raise him alone in a world that hated his father and hated him for who he was the son of even before they hated him for showing the stone in his bones.

She can’t get those five years back, but she can get the other two that lost them as well back from those red flags on the rooftops and those soldiers on the docks and the ocean crashing against her ankles. All of the things she hates have returned her broken boys back to her, all within a day, all within a few fraught hours. All because of a boy who looks like he should be dead, with a single, tired, golden eye watching the world just like Agni.

And what did it cost?

Some string, some fabric, some buttons and beads. Paltry things to start the healing process on a wound five years untended. Trinkets in one man’s hands, trash in another’s, and apparently treasure to the Spirit standing quietly in the surf.

She pulls back, brushes her hand over Haru’s hair, and kisses his forehead. She runs her hand over her husband’s long, gray beard, and pulls him down for a kiss. She can mourn the fact that it lost the last of its black without her later. For now, she has him.

Then she pulls away completely, squeezes one of their hands in her own with a smile, and turns toward the Bandit Prince, whose eyes are carefully trained on the waves as they lap at his boots.

“I would give my gratitude to you, for bringing them home,” she says, careful about her wording. Their deal isn’t done yet. She doesn’t want to say something wrong and lose her ability to feel grateful to anyone ever again. “I would thank you for returning them back where they’re supposed to be.”

The Bandit Prince shakes his head, so much like Haru did when he was having a bad day and she tried to cheer him up that, for a second, she almost wants to hug this dangerous Spirit too. “I don’t- I just need what was promised.”

“Mom?” Haru says behind her, cautiously afraid. “What did you agree to give him?”

He’s still young. He hasn’t had the time to learn about the ways of the Spirits enough to reason with one. All he knows of are stolen souls and missing bones and the whispers the miners will loudly shout at anyone if they get drunk enough.

“Sewing supplies,” she says simply, and draws them out of her pocket. She hands them over with the same hand that offered them before at the fire, the same hand that offered the half of the apple.

Simple things. Tiny things. Insignificant things.

No matter how many stories she hears, no matter how many old women speak with her about the creatures in the dark, no matter how old and wise she becomes, she will never truly understand Spirits.

He takes them from her, nods once, and then walks back into the ocean, toward the skiff he took out, where men and women in Fire Nation colors and armor wait.

Rina turns and flings her arms back around her boys. “We have to go now,” she whispers into their shoulders. “I already packed our things. I don’t know how long it will take the guards to notice you’re on the mainland, but I’m not risking a single night.”

“Rina,” Tyro says, and she wants to cry even more at hearing his voice again, “how did you…?”

She buries her face in his neck. “You’ve been gone for a while. He’s a new Spirit. We made a deal.” She pulls back so she can look Haru in the eye. “The Avatar and his friends left behind some of their things when they left,” she says, enunciating every perfectly in the way she does when she wants someone to know they fucked up. “I gave him those.”

Haru looks confused for a few seconds, until dawning realization pales his face. His fisted grip on two chunks of metal loosens enough that they fall into the sand with a soft puff of debris and sound.

“I love you very much, Haru,” Rina says, pecking another kiss on his forehead before lightly smacking his shoulder. “But you need to think about something other than rocks all day. That boy didn’t even try to hide his tattoos very hard.”

-

For once, the Prince doesn’t come up into the rigging to take advantage of his cot or disappear down into his quarters directly after completing a mission for the Spirit of the week. Instead, he sits against the railing and breathes out a heavy sigh, tilting his head back with his eyes closed and rubbing at his neck where his scales have been periodically popping up like they always do when the Prince has a bad day.

The dragon statue that he left behind when he went to the mainland scampers its way across the board to weigh down the Prince’s lap, wings dragging against the deck. After a hesitant second, the Prince brings his hands down to pet the dry scales coating the thing. “Much obliged, crewman,” he mutters. His neck droops a little against the railing and he falls asleep completely.

Bo navigates his way over to Rookie, who has honestly gotten used to everything here at a truly frightening rate. He’s been hanging out on deck pretty much all week, mostly because the Prince tends to have separation anxiety when any one of them gets hurt. “Nice,” Bo says, and is just slightly disappointed that the newbie has stopped jumping every time he arrives. On the other hand, he’s definitely adapted in less than a month, which sure means something when it comes to how weird and mind-bending the past few weeks have really been. “Glad to see you worked out your little earthbending problem. It didn’t run like a rock that time.”

“Yup,” Rookie says, and then lifts his hands up from where he was sitting on them. “One issue, though. I, uh, didn’t do that.”

Bo looks over to the unconscious Prince, and then the tiny little dragon with a blotch of red over its eye, just like the one it's sleeping on. They both silently, motionlessly watch as the dragon stretches out one thin, leathery, clay wing and closes its earthen eyes.

“Huh,” Bo says.

“Yup,” Rookie says again, fainter.

There’s a long pause.

“Well, okay then,” they both say at the same time.

“Good talk,” Rookie offers.

“Good talk,” Bo returns, and then goes to check on the knots on another part of the ship very high and very far away from whatever just happened.

He loves how normal his job is. It’s great. Nothing weird ever happens. No sir. Everything’s fine.

He’s gonna have some shit to work out next music night.

-

The cave is always dark, when Agni arrives. He tried not to make it a habit to visit, but it’s hard not to. A conversation from one lonely creature to another is always enticing for him, and it lifts his mood in the worst possible way to see someone else suffering worse than him. Plus, this is familiar. This is routine. This is where he comes when he knows he needs to suffer some sort of blame for what he’s done and for what he cannot do.

His mane flutters to life from the tips down, like coals catching alight and burning slowly into a bonfire. The light cuts through the worst of the permanent haze, but still leaves the dark corners that his most common and most challenging conversation partner adores to lurk in.

“Hello, Someone,” Agni says, and lets his words snake through the shadows to seek out the one he wouldn’t dare call a friend.

“Back again, are you?” it hisses. “I’m not going to share it. We’ve gone through this before.” The Someone skitters out into the light cast by Agni’s mane and squints up into his massive, staring eye. “I’m not going to trust you with it again. The whole reason I have it is because you broke it.”

“Call me sentimental, then,” Agni allows, knowing that he’s retreading on the ground of their most favorite argument, and that he will likely leave here feeling worse than he did when he arrived. It’s an odd sort of penance he’s set himself. “I just gave him a gift. I’m allowed to reminisce on what could have been if I hadn’t made the choices I did.”

“Oh, a gift?” The Someone crawls its way out of sight and returns at Agni’s back. “What kind? You’re not very good at giving ones that aren’t on fire. Or don’t come with nasty terms and conditions that wind up with people dead. Or not shattering them and leaving me to clean up your mess.”

Agni takes that in stride and only nods his head at the barb. “Life into a clay dragon of his. To… help him, I suppose. As payment for him acting as my proxy in a deal.” It was impulsive, yes, but so was the entire ordeal. The Three Sisters did not give him much time to deliberate on whether he would offer his champion’s assistance.

The Someone pauses, and then cackles. “How kindly cruel and cruelly kind, oh great sun. How sentimental of you. You have a soft spot for the boy,” The Someone rasps, a hair-raising sound that splits off into a hundred voices giggling. “I’m surprised you killed part of him before.”

Agni doesn’t shift at all, even though he knows that this is when their most favorite kind of wordplay comes into this pointless, painful game. “It was not my hand that did it. I had to be certain he could make real, unfettered change. It did not go as I planned. I regret it every day. Is that enough excuses for you?”

“There are never enough excuses for me, oh great sun. I am the master of them. There are none you can make that I haven’t already invented.” The Someone skitters to the side. “At the least, you know they are excuses. I know of many a man and many a monster that call them justifications.”

“I call some of those monsters family.” Agni clasps his hands behind his back, fingers intertwining a million times in an unbreakable knot. “I am older than them, and they use their youth to spite the sky.”

“Fanciful words from the blazing mark upon the surface of the heavens.” The Someone barks. “You claim the title of eldest. Do you also claim the title of wisest then, oh great sun?”

“The wisest of us are too wise to bother with any of us squabbling children. I am not even certain if I am wise. I am lonely, however, and that gives one much time to reflect on oneself. To find one’s flaws. To find one’s sunspots.”

The Someone laughs, harsh and mocking, which is the only way it seems to know how to. “I suppose your loneliness made you think in poetry then, too? Did you daydream of the day when someone asks you something you can press into your pretty prose like a living flower left to die and dry out between pages of a book already printed and inked?”

Agni rolls his shoulders, the seemingly whole joint splitting into two as he stretches, with his shoulderblades knifing out of his back in sheer, sharp angles. Bold words from one who does the same. “Perhaps. You don’t need to be rude about it.”

The Someone lurches forward, limbs skittering as it crawls its way up the wall and shoves its face a few breaths from Agni’s iris. “Rude? You tried to burn out the humanity from a boy and you think you deserve any more than my contempt? I listen to the screams your children wreak every day, and you have the nerve to tell me I am rude for complaining about your phrasing?”

Ah. Yes. Here’s the sort of recrimination Agni knew he would face. It’s arguably what he came here for. It helps him feel something, even if they are retracing the same battle lines they’ve drawn and walked a thousand times before. He stands unmoved, but his fingers flex behind his back into another knot. “You know as well as I do that unless one of our number are killed, we are forbidden from interfering with anything but blessings, their revocation, deals, and prodding. You know that I cannot change that.”

“Why not?” The Someone says, screams, whispers, howls, a thousand voices speaking in agony. “Why can’t you? Why can’t you just disobey for once? You interfere enough to condemn a child to a prophecy of death, to bless a flame wielded by a murderer, to take your fire from the throne, to breathe a spark of life into clay, and yet you cannot interfere enough to burn the crown off of that man’s head? To end this senseless war and save your people from this brutality?”

Agni lowers his head, mane sparking dangerously. He has to wonder if The Someone’s desire to rebel was what forced it to be trapped and condemned here, to live in pain for all eternity. The knowledge of why it’s trapped here has been burned from all memory, after all, but it wouldn’t surprise him. “The world spoke a century ago,” Agni reminds it. “It demanded no ill action and little manifestation. There is no Spirit that isn’t sworn to the world, so none that can rebel. But humanity needs a Spirit to drag them back into harmony. None of us can disobey, and none of us can fix it on our own.”

“So you repeated the sins of the past, then?” The Someone mutters, barely a question. These words, this careful back-and-forth of blame and pain and bitter hate, are as familiar to Agni as the crimes of his children. They both know nothing will come of this argument. They both know nothing ever has. But they speak it out anyway, because it makes them both feel like they are less futile than they are.

“The Avatar abandoned us, and we did not know if he would ever return,” Agni says, patiently. “If there was one that could interfere on our behalf, even at the cost of a legion of my own dead, to end this war, then it will be worth it.” Agni still remembers when he petitioned the world. He remembers the way it had given him that terrible ultimatum, to have his champion at the cost of so many of his people, or to have no champion and let them survive. He remembers how hard it was to accept the consequences, and how easily he made his choice. “I didn’t think the Avatar would return. None of us did. Even now, I’m not certain that the Avatar will act in our interests. My hatchling knows the cruelties of this world that the Avatar does not. My hand in his making was as much as I could defy the world’s orders.”

“Yes,” The Someone hisses, the sibilant sound echoing sharply, growing longer in tandem with the fangs growing steadily from out of The Someone’s upper lip. 

This part is new. Usually, at this point, The Someone just spits about rebellion once more and then tells Agni to leave. There’s never been a reason for them to break that careful routine. Agni has always gotten to feed his guilt, and The Someone has always gotten to sate its anger, and then Agni has always left so they could both lick their flayed egos in familiar loneliness. 

“Yes,” The Someone repeats. “Your hand twisting from the sky and strangling his throat so you would be sure he wasn’t too human to fail. How beautifully you crafted him, and how callously you helped break him. He was strong enough to crack his own eggshell when the time came, but you broke it open for him with enough force to shear his wings from him.”

Agni flinches. “I gave you my reasoning-”

“Reasoning!” The Someone howls in laughter or agony. It is hard to tell which. “So it is reasoning now, and not excuse. Not justification, either. You know there is no justice in what you’ve done, but you still think there is reason to it. How utterly  _ fascinating.” _

Agni bows his head completely. “Fear turns reasons into excuses. I was not immune to that. I thought he was ready to rise. I thought he was ready. I thought I could dig up the ivy that would smother him and let the saplings I provided grow. Instead, I took out seedlings and kudzu alike.”

The Someone slides down from the wall with a grinding noise, and walks pointedly to a dark corner, far from Agni. “You’re right,” The Someone says, “you are not wise. You tried to make another horror, but, when it was ready to slither out into the world, you tried to make it less horrific by taking the humanity from it. You called the rarest flower in your garden a weed and burned it to the roots.”

Agni has nothing to say to that. He’s never been the most gracious gardener. For all that he sees, he can understand little of what humans do. The Someone is not wrong. It never really is.

“We may be called monsters, oh great sun,” The Someone says, “and we may do monstrous things for what we tell ourselves are good reasons.” It spits off to the side, bitterly. “But if you wanted a monster? If you wanted someone that could commit your horrors for you but rebel all at once? Then you should have kept your hatchling as human as possible. You have done nothing but harm. I look forward to watching him break free of your chains as well.”

The Someone does not tell Agni to leave, before it sinks into its shadows. It does not deign to complete this farce of a flagellating routine they’ve entertained for these few lonely years.

Agni is a creature of routine - of sunrises and sunsets. Unfortunately, it seems everything is changing. He sees himself out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ::::::::::::::::::)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))
> 
> Happy hobbit birthday gift to all of y'all. This marks the one-year anniversary since I posted some will sing (scream), aka work #3 in this collection. Time means nothing anymore.
> 
> I love having Zuko be this weird, Fae-like being that trades the freedoms of loved ones for what seems like and really is some absolute garbage. He has his reasons, but it's mostly because that boy is tired, desperate, living his worst life, and at all times struggling with morality and a little bit of standard teen brain-fuckery when it comes to serotonin. His crew are vibing with him, and all outsiders are somewhere on the 'holy shit what is that thing oh god' to 'i think this will be my son' spectrum.
> 
> Someone asked if Zuko would be getting a therapy animal, and I have decided to grant that request, mostly because Zuko got more emotional issues more quickly than I expected and probably deserves one. Introducing the as-of-yet-unnamed and freshly sentient bby!dragon! If you've ever worked with large quantities of clay, then you know that little shit is hefty as hell, since it's solid and about the size of a small cat. It's a mobile weighted blanket and also back issues. If you want to toss in your two cents for a name for the darling, either drop one in the comments or in the replies/tags of [this post](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/626061579886215168/heyyyyyyy-if-zuko-gets-a-therapy-animal-in-nghmb).
> 
> What's this? Complex divine plans? In my story??? That never happens! Good luck puzzling out what I'm putting down, because I am desperate to have it make some sort of sense. I spent a solid four hours of nonlinear time ranting about it to another person and another four hours of silent contemplation while staring at a wall to pull something together from whatever prose I spit out a year ago. I think it works. Maybe. No idea. We'll have to see.
> 
> Agni should not be left alone with children. Speaking of Agni, here's an excellent piece of [submitted art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/625106561897021440/i-really-liked-agnis-design-so-i-felt-the-need) made by blaiddthewolf on tumblr. It is very much how I meant for him to be, and it freaks me out in the best possible way. Turns out having that many joints in the arm/finger area is great for the symbolic significance and the amount of weird shit I can say he does with them, but it's also very Disturbing.
> 
> Also, if you want a fun visual representation of how it feels to be in Zuko's vicinity while he's having even a low-level bad time, here's a [piece of art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/625929900181913600/fiercesomest-the-six-fingered-villain) that I found that really nails that particular emotion down with a sledgehammer.
> 
> I love all of y'all very much. Thank you for all of your support. Some of you should probably go to bed. Maybe. All of you should probably drink some water. Maybe. I know I'm going to go do both. See you next chapter!


	22. Chapter 22

The leadup to the solstice has been consistently odd the last few years, but it’s definitely worse this year.

By that, Cook means that there are anywhere between a dozen and a gross of separate screaming arguments happening in his mess hall, which is impressive considering there’s only a few dozen people present. 

The arguments periodically run into one another or split off into equally furious sub-groups. Everyone interested in firebending their problems away are jockeying for the door while continuing their frenzied head shaking and finger pointing, since they know better than to try to burn down the mess hall. Cook counts a baker's dozen of knives wielded with varying degrees of skill in someone else’s direction, and two that look more likely to stab their owners than their opponents. The newest addition to the crew is flat atop the doorframe, tail swishing as it observes the proceedings with blank eyes. The Prince is in the rafters again.

Cook just wanted to serve some soup, but it seems his usually devoted patrons are too busy trying to strangle each other to eat anything. More soup for him, then.

“It’s heartwarming seeing how many logical men are completely losing it,” the General says pleasantly, from right outside the serving window. He has a bowl of soup, too, but he’s more invested in the chaos than Cook’s lovely creation. “I think I saw one of my old men try to physically tackle someone for saying his suggestion was subpar.”

Cook sighs and dishes out a third bowl for himself. “I’m just upset that the newbies have adjusted this quickly.” Of the people that didn’t take advantage of their new legally dead status by leaving the ship at one of the ports they’ve stopped at since acquiring the new recruits, half of them are right in the middle of the fray, pointing fingers and knives and threats and suggestions at whoever is closest. The other half are- oh no, they’re participating too, but they look like they actually agreed on a suggestion. “Huh. Damn. I thought I’d get to be mean to them for longer, but now they’re unionizing. They grow up so fast.”

Iroh eats another spoonful and analyzes the mess hall like it’s a battlefield, which is a fair assessment at this point. 

The Dragon of the West, indeed. You can take him out of the military, you can take him out of his topknots, you can take him out of his armor and robes and leave him with nothing, but he will always be the General that broke the Wall of Ba Sing Se. He will always be the demon that cut swathes through the Kingdom. He will always have that monster lurking right behind his eyes that sees men as Pai Sho pieces and nothing more.

He can claim he’s retired all he wants, but that sort of thing hardly exists in any real sense this far into the War. The lack of a command insignia anywhere on him doesn’t mean he’s somehow lost the skills that got him to where he was before he decided to fall from his meteoric rise. His refusal to join any firebending drills does not bank the blood and inner fire that helped him rise as quickly as he did. It won’t wash the blood from his hands, from his legacy, from his heritage.

No matter how kindly General Iroh may act, no matter how much he’s changed after abandoning his siege and the crown, no matter how many colony boys he quietly tests and earthbenders he lets onto his vessel, he will always remain the Dragon of the West, Breaker of the Wall, eldest grandson of Firelord Sozin, eldest child of Firelord Azulon, eldest brother of Firelord Ozai, and, gods willing, eldest and likely only uncle of the Firelord perched in the rafters. He will always have the sins of his past and the sins of his bloodlines branded, burnt, and baked into the core of who he is.

But, for now, it is almost comforting to watch the Dragon at work again over something this menial. Cook has sat in the mess tent and watched this man crunch the numbers on how best to leverage the deaths of hundreds. Now, he sits in the kitchen watching this man crunch the numbers on who exactly will win out in a glorified popularity game.

General Iroh points his spoon toward one of the larger factions forming in the back. “They’re going to win, most likely. They’ve taken the most strategic corner.”

It’s strange to see the same mistake made twice in one man’s plans. Maybe it’s because the General quit directly after making that final, fatal flaw in his own design, but he hasn’t patched up the hole in his strategies that must come from always growing up with a ration pack on hand and a hundred men willing to give theirs up for his comfort.

Mainly, hunger, and what desperate, stupid things desperate, stupid people will do to vanquish it. It’s what backfired on them in the Siege of Ba Sing Se. It’s what the General has failed to account for now.

“As much as I hate to disagree with you General,” Cook says, slightly smug in the tiredest possible way, “we’re occupying the most strategic corner. After all-” he sets his bowl down and taps the soup pot with its ladle, producing a decisive ringing noise- “we have the food supplies. Once they tire themselves out, we’re the only way they can keep up the fight.”

The General doesn’t say anything or eat any of his soup for a long while. It seems very likely that he’s just come to the same painful conclusion about his planning habits that Cook just gathered. “True enough,” he says finally, after his frozen pause, and then forces some cheer into his tone. “I suppose you have a bright idea for a name? You aren’t brawling with the rest of them for supremacy.”

“Neither are you, General,” Cook counters.

“On behalf of my old bones alone,” Iroh commiserates. “Stress does bad things to my joints, and I am not as young a man as I used to be.” He casts a sideways glance to Cook, a few years younger than him, even though it looks like it could be the opposite. “Something you’re familiar with, too, I’d guess. Is that why you’re hanging back?”

Cook picks his bowl back up and downs it like a champ. “No, it’s because I know I’ll win eventually. Let them fight out a war of attrition, let them beat down each other’s resources first. I have what they don’t, and they won’t have the energy to fight for it. The only thing they’ll be able to do is fold.”

Iroh laughs a little bitterly. “You would have made it far if you ever tried for command.”

Cook scoffs and sets his bowl down with a clatter. “You couldn’t pay me all the gold in the world to be responsible for any of these maniacs.”

“Fair,” General Iroh allows. “There’s so much life in them, it’d hurt to order them to their deaths.”

They pause for a while, and let the chatter and heated arguments coat over the ragged, painful silence between them. Sometimes there are some truths a little too difficult to face over soup. This is a red meat conversation. Something where each party has a knife. Spoons are harder to passively feed aggression into.

General Iroh clears his throat after the stilted stillness between them has stretched for an appropriate amount of time. “I can’t help but feel you may be rigging this vote.”

“Then that’s someone else’s fault for telling me not to,” Cook counters. “The Prince said we’d all vote on what name to give that thing. Just because everyone else immediately went to violence and debate doesn’t mean that I’m not allowed to hoard and supply the resources to tip the scales in my favor. It’s everyone else’s fault for having no imagination and no access to my kitchen. The fact that I’m the only one resorting to extortion is a sign of their failings, not mine.”

The General laughs bleakly. “Forget command, you should’ve tried politics.”

That’s a horrifying thought. There’s not a lot of time to make soup when you’re supposed to be running some sort of office.

Cook shudders. “Forget forgoing all the gold in the world, I will shave off my beard before I willingly do that.”

Somewhere in his mess hall, there’s the sound of a knife thudding into wood, and then an even louder expletive as the unfortunate soul realizes they’ve just damaged part of Cook’s domain. Given the accent, curse of choice, and fear with which it’s delivered… that’d be the one sail operator with the split eyebrow and missing canine. He’ll have to work for his next meal, that’s for sure.

“A valid reaction.” Iroh scratches at his own beard. “So you have a strategy and the resources with which to pull it off. The only question is, what results do you plan on achieving using your tactical genius?”

Cook slings his bowl into the wash basin without even looking at it, leaning forward out of the window and pointing up at the only other person clinging onto the rafters, midway through an argument with someone on the ground. “He’s been uppity these past couple days. Flashy. The bouncy, ballsy little bastard thinks he needs to prove something to keep his name.” Cook grins. “I’m going to make him work for it.”

-

“Are you… are you kidding me?” Bo says, when the final vote is taken. He watches the dragon roll around on the table, rubbing the side of its face against the wooden planks. “Why did- what- are you all actively trying to make my life harder?”

“Yes,” Cook responds, with an evil little glint in his eye and the soup ladle still in his hand as he stands around the same mess hall table they’ve all clustered around. “Yes, we are.”

“If it makes you feel better,” one of the crewmen next to him that Bo definitely has blackmail on, even if he’s never made the woman aware of it, whispers, “I voted for Mango. We can call it that if you like.” The bowl of soup in her hand says otherwise, but it was a blind vote, so he can’t exactly prove anything.

Beauh, the dragon, squirms its way back up to its feet and does a full-body wiggle that really accentuates the razor sharp spikes dappling down its spine. It pounces directly off of the table and onto Cook’s shoulders, and then uses those as a platform to bound to the soldiers around and eventually come to a halt standing somewhat painfully on Bo’s pauldrons, his last remaining relic of being a fully qualified soldier before everything else got too unwieldy to really use twenty feet off of the deck.. 

Cook winces and turns his head, frowning at the new slashes by his shoulders that cut thick slashes through the heavy fabric and scratch at the skin underneath.

“Karma,” Bo whispers slightly, lifting up one hand to scritch at the chin of his third competitor. “Thanks, Cook,” he says, louder. “Maybe get some armor on if you like the little guy enough to leverage the vote, though. Beauh seems a little too sharp for you right now.”

He gets the feeling he’ll regret saying that later. It’s fine. He can bribe or blackmail other people for their non-poisoned and existent food. He should’ve just bribed or blackmailed people into voting for Clay. It was a respectable name. Perfectly reasonable. Now he’s going to be stuck as ‘Crewman’ for all of his life. Ensign Liu Bo came in with her title already on her, dragon Beauh is a fucking dragon with a democratically elected name, and Ensign Bo has been a crewman for almost all three years of his service on the vessel and only  _ just _ got that promotion.

Some Spirit probably has it out for him. It’s probably the one hiding in the rafters and doing a very bad job of hiding his laughter.

Beauh shivers the spines on its back, making a rattling noise that sounds almost like a purr. Maybe a growl. Bo has enough issues with understanding people to start worrying about understanding a dragon made out of glorified dirt. 

He could get used to it, though.

-

The burned ash footprint where trees used to be glares out at Aang, as though the yellow and orange of his robes should be as burnt and black as the remnants of a proud grove. Footprints, ordered in a marching line along the edges of this fresh, horrible ash tell all the story one needs to understand the reason for the emptiness where life and twittering birds should reside.

This is not a fresh wound, nor is it an old one. The gray ash piles in thick clumps, already settled and coating the dirt to suffocate whatever life tries to push its way free of the carnage, but there are no stubborn green sprouts making their way up through the desolation yet. Whatever firebenders caused this are long gone, but the land itself is still screaming.

“Tui and La,” Sokka curses, hand flexing against the gold fan on his waist. For all Aang knows, this might be just what Kyoshi Island looked like in their wake, once all was said and done.

Aang didn’t hang out with many firebenders in his childhood due to the many myths about the Air Nomads finding purchase in the Nation’s children and their schoolhouses. Most were too paranoid to hang out with him. A few would bend thin, protective lines of flame between themselves and Aang. Others would wield handfuls of candlelight near him to scare him off. Kuzon didn’t, which was good. He was good at firebending, but he only knew childish tricks.

Aang has always lived in a stone temple and traveled only where it was safe. He has never fully appreciated the destruction that fire wielded with sheer malice can bring to a place that burns. He can taste the cruelty in the soot that spirals up into the air when the wind gusts. There was no fear behind those old, dead flames. There was no desperation. It was just unchecked, unexamined hate. He knows what fearful flames smell like, and this is not it.

“I’m supposed to protect these places,” someone says, and after a moment, Aang realizes it was him. His tongue is a little numb in his mouth. He’s sick of tasting ash everywhere he goes, but he can’t escape it. “I- I don’t-”

“You’ll learn how to,” Katara says, stepping up beside him with something lost and angry in her eyes. “We’ll go North, I’ll teach you, and you’ll learn. I promise. In the meantime, we do what we can.”

He doesn’t know if waterbending will fix this. If it will fix the fact that everywhere he goes, something seems to break. That everywhere he goes, tragedy clings to his heels and seeps under his shadow and screams from his breath.

Katara kneels down beside a particularly badly burnt patch and clears the soot away, unearthing a stubbornly intact acorn. “It’ll grow back,” she says, quietly. Aang doesn’t know what exactly she sees as her hands tremble slightly around the nut, but he’s willing to bet it’s not too different from his own overlay of the Temple over the burnt landscape. She stuffs that one in her untorn pocket and grabs another from what was a forest floor.

She digs her hands into the soil and clears out a patch for it, patting the earth over the acorn and uncapping her waterskin to bend into the soil. She stares at that for a long time, and then raises her head slowly, eyes tracking over the burnt stumps and gnarled, dead roots.

She stands up and wades further into the ash, spilling it into thick clouds around her ankles as she strides through the barren landscape, calling the water out of her skin and sprinkling it over the remnants of the grove with a single-minded purpose.

Sokka tosses his own waterskin to her before she gets too far away, and she catches and uncorks it without even looking as she moves ever-forward through the desolation. Aang bends his own over to Katara a second later.

He can’t understand her words as she moves, but they are sharper and swifter than the gentle, slow motions she’s tried to teach him. He doesn’t recognize the words when they’re spoken this fast, but he can feel the tone of them somewhere in the back of his mind. They are furious and desperate and pleading and guiding, like she can call the old forest back with her will alone. Aang bends the soot away where it is the thickest and most suffocating to clear the way for the water spilling out between her fingers.

She stops when all of the waterskins are empty. She doesn’t leave any to clean the ash that rises up and paints her in gray and black from the knee down, having given everything away to the ghost of a forest. She doesn’t seem to care. Puffs of gray chase her every step back to Aang and Sokka, like ghosts tugging on her skirts and begging for her tears and her waterskin and any sustenance in this dehydrated wasteland.

“It’ll grow back,” she says again, tossing their waterskins back and tightening the strap on her own empty one. There’s a river they spotted a mile or so ahead of them, so they can restock on water supplies fairly easily. It still makes Aang uncomfortable to be out of drinking water and to have the only other bender here without her weapon.

But it’s a small price to pay to do some good. It’s easy to do good things for objects and plants and stationary things. It’s just acorns in the wild. It’s not a Tribe stranded and hiding on the ice. It’s not an abandoned Temple holding nothing but spots in the dust where bones should be. It’s not a neutral Island set ablaze. It’s not a boy taken out of his Kingdom and out of his element to suffer for the crime of existing.

(He hopes it’s not. Please, not again. Please don’t let somewhere suffer painfully just because of the sin of his presence, let alone his assistance. He’s  _ trying,  _ but with every attempt something breaks, and it breaks something in him with it.)

“It’ll grow back,” Sokka says, firmly, like his voice alone can steady Katara’s hands where they shake in some mixture of fear and rage. “It’ll be stronger than before. More resilient. The trees will come back.”

Katara meets her brother’s eyes with her own tired pair. “How long until the Nation comes and burns those ones down, too? How much ash does there have to be in this dirt to make saplings resilient enough to survive in this? How many acorns have to watch their oaks burn to the ground before they’re strong enough to fight back?” She turns her head and purses her lips, and starts back towards Appa to guide him toward the river.

Aang gets the idea that they might not be talking about trees.

They fill up their water skins in silence and clean off the worst of the grime from themselves in the river, and cautiously explore an unburnt section of the forest while carefully avoiding each other’s eyes.

A branch snaps behind Aang and he whirls around, one hand going to the cloak hood that’s not covering anything at the moment and the other going tense on his staff. Behind him, he hears Katara pop open her waterskin and Sokka snap open his fan.

There’s a man there, with haunted eyes and a hunched spine. He takes in the blue tattoos and autumn colors Aang is wreathed in, and falls onto his knees.

“Please,” he says, “please, I saw your bison and I knew that- that I- that we-” he breaks off and leans forward, pressing his forehead against the leaf litter on the ground. “My village needs your help, Avatar. We’re desperate, and none of our requests have worked. We need you. Please, help us.”

-

Iroh’s joints ache horribly, and the sounds of arguments are still ringing in his ears as they make port near a town that has some fantastic hot springs. It won’t be for long, granted, since the area has a tendency to be home to some radical Kingdom groups and even more radical Ozai hardliners. Zuko won’t be leaving the ship without someone else with him, and not without a good reason. Iroh won’t be gone more than a few hours, just to be safe.

The last time they were in the area, Zuko was chasing a particularly nasty Spirit that liked to disguise itself as a child and kidnap people to its patron stream. He ran straight through the nearby forest, the village within, both of the nearby coastal villages and one couple’s poor farm before he managed to catch it. Of course, then both of the aforementioned radical groups both independently attempted to kill him. They thwarted each other, thankfully. It was a highly stressful day for Iroh. He’s glad the hot springs were there.

He’s exceptionally glad that they remain here and are as lovely and stress-relieving as they were all those months ago, although he does wish he brought his tea with him. His mind won’t shut up, after all.

It has always been hard to let his nephew do what he wills, especially when what he wills is a profoundly dumb thing. It’s harder to ignore it, though, when there is the undercurrent of it being Agni’s will as well. It is even harder knowing that it is far from an undercurrent in this case. The bard sponsored by Iroh’s Order certainly seems to think so at the least, and he tends to know things beyond what he is told that have an unfortunate tendency to ring true.

The fact that the divine are so interested in his nephew is the opposite of comforting, really. If his hair wasn’t already gray, Zuko would be the cause of it. There’s no amount of hot springs or tea that can silence that ever-nagging worry that he’ll wake up one day to find Zuko bleeding out slowly under a boulder. That he’ll get condolences and mementos and sideways glances from all of the men beneath the red sails of the  _ Siren. _ It’s not like he can retire from being a General this time. It’s not like he can find another blood relative to act as a son.

Iroh sighs, and casts those thoughts aside, determined to relax for however many minutes he has left until he should return.

Unfortunately, determination does nothing to stop earthbenders from kidnapping him and completely ruining any semblance of relaxation.

-

By the time Uncle is an hour late, Zuko has paced a slightly singed trail by the prow and has tied and untied his mask so many times he thinks he may have invented a new knot.

He wants to snap at something. There’s a tension that crawls up his spine and out of his scars that he absolutely hates, because he  _ knows _ something is wrong, but he doesn’t know how. Beauh slithers and clambers in spirals around his right arm, and its presence is probably the one thing keeping him from making a very impulsive, very bad decision.

“Are you planning on burning something down?” a slightly rough female voice asks. He turns to find her standing surprisingly close and only being watched by a few curious crewmembers. It’s the woman with the scars that almost attacked him after waking up, the one that prayed for the lives of her fellows while she was about to die. “Because if you are, I recommend not doing it on your very flammable ship.”

It probably says something about Zuko that he worries less about talking in somewhat close quarters with a person that once tried to seriously hurt him and more that his Uncle - a man with an extensive history of being delayed by particularly riveting games of Pai Sho or by overly-interesting shop windows - is a little late.

Zuko pauses in his pacing. Beauh writhes up to lay around his neck. “Did someone put you up to this?”

The woman shrugs lightly, but inclines her head respectfully. “It may have been implied by a few people that I should make some amends for trying to kill you and that I should pull my weight onboard. So, are you planning on scorching something or not?”

Zuko hesitates, then reaches up and tightens the knot on his veil. “Maybe. Uncle is late. I don’t think he planned to be. It’s possible I’ll wind up setting whatever is waylaying him on fire. Are you interested in joining?”

She blows out a thick breath and rolls her shoulders, pulling on the shiny scar tissue across one bicep. “A plot to save the Dragon of the West and maybe do some light arson? Yeah, why not. It’s been a bit since I left this boat. I’ve got some stuff I should probably work out one way or another.”

Zuko nods, and doesn’t flinch when Beauh shifts around his neck, spines ghosting by his throat. “Try to keep up, then.”

He proceeds to exit the boat at what he would say is a reasonable pace, although given the curse and the hurried steps that follow him, maybe it’s not as reasonable as he thinks. Or maybe it’s the part where he’s jumping overboard and swimming to shore instead of going down the dock. It’s probably that, actually.

-

Sokka’s first impression of the whole town is somewhat tainted by the half-crumbling, presumably life-sized, massively unsettling, weirdly buff statue in front of the few entirely untouched buildings.

It’s disturbing enough before he halfway recognizes the crudely constructed veil over one of the statue’s eyes. Suki warned them about him, Sokka caught maybe a half of a glimpse of what their hunter looked like, and King Bumi had been vague about him but still fairly comprehensive. Added up together, it’s not hard to tell what the statue was supposed to depict, even if it is over halfway to falling apart.

The Bandit Prince, in the- well, not the flesh. In the crumbling rock, maybe.

Aang has also noticed it, given that he freezes completely in his tracks and raises his staff into a defensive position. Their escort pauses in his guidance and follows Aang’s cautious eyes. He chuckles bleakly and plants his walking stick in the dirt to lean on it heavier as he gestures. 

“The Bandit Prince chased a Spirit through here a year ago,” the escort says kindly. “It took one of our children and a visiting traveler, but the Bandit Prince brought them back. The traveler bent the statue of him in thanks.” He casts a sideways glance to Aang. “I know you are not on good terms with him, Avatar, but to us he was a savior. Now, you are the same. The Avatar did not respond to our prayers when the Bandit Prince did, and now it is the opposite. We won’t take sides in your conflict. We can barely fight our way through our own.”

Aang doesn’t lower his staff. His shoulders do something weird though, which probably means he’s going through one of his guilt sessions. “He… he rescued your people. He saved you.”

“Yes,” their guide affirms. “Hopefully, you might do the same. I certainly believe you can.” He casts a look to an old firepit, filled with ash. “The Bandit Prince may have left us and left our calls unheeded, but he still protects us. Hei Bai, the Spirit that has assaulted us these past days, seems to be warded away from the houses guarded by the statue.”

Katara takes her hand away from her waterskin slowly. “But you’re just… letting it fall apart? Are you all nonbenders?”

The man’s face gets more pinched. “The statue doesn’t like to be bent by anyone but the Spirit-touched, and none of us are skilled with masonry by hand. We’re more likely to make it fall apart.” He continues his slow shuffle forward. “There aren’t many Spirit-touched people here. There aren’t any in the village that are benders. We only had one Spirit-touched bender, and Hei Bai took her the first night.” He sighs heavily. “We’re sitting turtleducks, now. We don’t know when the statue and all of the protections it provides will crumble entirely.”

As if on cue, part of the statue’s elbow cracks loose and shatters on the ground.

The guide’s face sinks steadily into a grim expression just this side of despair. “At this rate, if it doesn’t fail tonight, then it will fail tomorrow. Tomorrow is the solstice. The Spirit has only taken one person every day it attacks, but if the solstice comes, Hei Bai is still angry, and we have no protection? There may be no one left at all. We need help, Avatar, and we need it  _ now.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to thank tumblr user do-rey-me for providing me with galaxy brained take on the dragon's name by saying 'Bo, yet another one'. I tried to not have it look weird and french but I realized it would confuse the hell out of everyone to have so many similar spellings. So many of y'all put excellent amounts of thought and analysis into potential name picks, but I could not deny the hilarity of that particular name. Mango by catflowerqueen was also very good and so was Clay by animeobsessedandotherfandoms and InfinityWildflower, so they both got mentions, but Beauh was too good to pass up.
> 
> Cook is a sneaky bastard, and he knows how to coerce people with threats of no food and also how to use bribery. Iroh is having a Day. Liu Bo, my wife, rocks back up to the plate after two weeks of being exposed to the wildest shit as a changed woman ready to commit arson. Aang is having a Day after two weeks of the wildest shit and does not like any of it. The people of Senlin Village cannot care about the deity-scale middle-school brawl happening between the two people supposed to Fix Shit because Shit needs Fixing and they don't care how it happens.
> 
> Sue me, but I really wanted to work [krchov's art](https://krchov.tumblr.com/post/622836717494435841/i-had-a-convo-with-zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa-about-zuko-in) into this and this was the perfect place to do it. After all, if a Spirit is that pissed, why would it want to leave a village standing? And hey, what's this? Zuko has experience in dealing with Spirits that look like kids but are also very much Spirits that do things like kidnap people? Man, sure hope that has never colored his perception of the Avatar at all.
> 
> More excellent [art by blaiddthewolf](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/626406461974642688/i-needed-to-draw-the-little-clay-dragon-for-they), this time of Beauh. I love my spiny baby.
> 
> All of y'all are excellent. Go forth and conquer.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI: I fudged with the dates a little bit. Aang showed up to Senlin Village a day later than in canon. Do with that what you will.

Hei Bai took Sokka. That damned fucking Spirit took Sokka, leaving behind only a single golden fan in the dirt. Sokka is gone, the Spirit is not appeased, and the solstice is tonight.

Katara could kill something right now, with grief and rage alone. She could drown the stars in their own lungs and ask them how it feels to have no breath left as the world crumbles. She could burn everything and not give a damn.

But she can’t. She can’t.

What is right for her to do now?

What should she do?

Sokka always made the plans. Sokka always knew, deep in his bones, what was best. Maybe not always what was right, maybe not what should be done, but always, inevitably, the correct way through the tumbling wilderness of morality and survival. He always made the decisions, and she always stood beside him as his counterpoint, as the surf beneath his solidly sailing ship. As the thing to carry him free of any unfortunate storm and drive him sharper down his chosen trail.

But he’s gone. Maybe not dead, but most certainly gone, and there is only a single golden fan left in the dirt this time. There is no body to push out to sea, burnt and charred. There is no red, steaming snow. There is no necklace she can tie around her throat. There is just an empty space at her shoulder where her brother should be for her to snark at and push and pull and hug.

What is right for her to do now?

What should she do?

The townspeople are as tired and jaded as they were yesterday, and she can see herself in them more than ever. The statue has all but crumbled now, after an errant swipe of the Spirit’s thousand paws destroyed even more of it. The houses behind it are untouched. Nothing else is. Nothing will remain once the veil between Spirit and human thins into almost nothingness tonight.

Aang stands, birdlike and fragile, perched on the end of an intact roof. He looks ready to break free of his own skin. He looks ready to crumple into solemn nothingness and never return. He looks ready to stand there, unmoving, as a sentinel until he withers into bone. He looks like he stands on a crossroads.

Katara stands there with him, except she stands where the forest meets the village clearing, burnt acorn in hand, heart cold and gaze empty. They stand in the same place and across a gulf a million miles wide. They stand as trees, unbent and unbroken at different edges of the same glade, drinking in the same spited sun, roots invisibly entwined far beneath the dirt with bonds of the same grief, but their branches do not touch and the anxious creatures burrowed in her bark are not the same that live in his.

What is right for her to do now?

What should she do?

It’s funny how those are two separate questions, in the here and now.

What is right? What is right is to stay here and fix this. It’s to stand beside her fellow tree, her fellow friend, her fellow traveler down these terrifying crossroads, as they place themselves between gods at the height of their power and people that can’t protect themselves. What is right is to remain, to stand in the place of the crumbling statue of the inhuman creature hunting them and wait out the darkness, side by side.

But what should they do? What they should do is leave. They should cut their losses before they lose any more and flee as quickly as possible. They should run, as far and as fast as they can, ever-North, ever onward to the fabled place that remembers what their forefathers said to the waves. They should run, and they should learn, so they survive this the next time they see it, so they can fix the burnt forest and the frightened people living within. They should leave behind the possibility of her brother for the certainty of their survival from here, because that is the only way they can get strong enough to solve problems like this and problems like the marching footprints next to the burnt grove.

So, with those two contradictory concepts held firmly in her mind as she stares out at the dew on the leaves, she asks herself a question.

_ What are you _ going _ to do? _

On the rooftop far above her head, she can almost hear Aang asking himself the same question.

She can almost hear it as they both silently reach the same conclusion.

The necklace on Katara’s throat, the fan at her waist, the hole in her pocket torn back where Haru was still free, they are relics of her failure to act. The bones Aang sent tumbling over the side of his home, the thick cloak his old friend tied on with arthritic, shaking hands, the devastation he sees now, they are the results of his decision to run.

She raises her eyes as he lowers his, and they meet in the terrifying middle ground of this horrible morning. They don’t say a word as gray meets blue from across that glade and that gulf and the mere few meters between them both, as the sea and the storm join eye to eye and palm to palm and they choose the same path of the crossroads.

It strikes her, perhaps, that she’s also found the answer to the question that’s been trailing silently, unknowingly up her spine since she found that fan in the dirt.

_ What would Sokka do? _

She hopes this is it.

-

Sokka remembers very little from the time Hei Bai stepped into the town to- well, now. Now, somewhere on a road he doesn’t recognize, heading toward a hill he can’t place, under a blazing morning sun, with everything shaded a little too brightly and dully at the same time to be in real life. Everything between then and now is an oddly shaped blur.

There aren’t any landmarks he recognizes. Everything is incredibly uniform, but also incredibly still. It’s like the wind doesn’t exist. It’s like life doesn’t exist. It’s like everything is frozen in the middle of a grand painting. It’s like everything has died and is only waiting for someone to dig life itself a grave.

Not Sokka, though. Sokka moves forward. Sokka has been moving forward since before the world blurred into nothingness and he keeps moving forward now. He doesn’t know why. He knows he could stop if he wanted to, but he’s always been more curious than he should be.

The landscape blurs again. His sense of time blurs again. The sun is above him, now. He keeps walking.

The world shifts slightly, and a section to his left discolors back to what Sokka thinks reality might be. Before he can consider whether or not to stop walking to examine it, a grouping of people abruptly sprint through it, limbs awkwardly cut off by the view he’s been given until they move further into the discolored section. It’s like he’s been placed behind a veil painted like reality and just had a section carved out.

They rush through what he can see quickly, some of them casting panicky looks over their shoulders. All except one are wearing the green fabric and metal armor of the Kingdom. The exception isn’t wearing much at all except for the cuffs wrapped around his wrists, and is stumbling as he’s dragged along at pace by a long lead of chain. He’s smiling for some reason, and it flickers between genuine mirth and a fanged snarl between one second and the next.

They’re running. Sokka doesn’t know what they’re running from, but there is something excited that flutters and grows in his chest watching them flee. He can’t place it, but it grows up his throat until he’s smiling too as he watches them trip and stumble over themselves to escape from something in the distance.

For a second, it’s like he’s back in the biting chill of a South Pole winter, watching the leopard-caribou flee along the snowy plains. For a second, he wants to lay chase.

Then the vision disappears, and the veil closes shut.

Sokka keeps walking.

The world blurs, and time with it. The sun presses against his brow, like an Elder giving a benediction. Everything is back to its perfect state of unreality. He keeps walking.

The hill he walks ever-toward distorts, shivers, and spits out a creature at the apex. It is the same shade as the dirt, but it writhes up from its cradle and it spreads earthen wings. It stares down at Sokka with blank eyes. It steps forward with all four of its scaled legs and tilts its head back to croon a long, whistling note.

Sokka steps forward with all four of his gray-furred legs and tilts his head back to howl one to match.

The creature makes another noise in response. It’s just wind whistling and earth grinding, but somehow Sokka knows that the creature is laughing. Not a kind laugh, either, not a light-hearted, free-spirited thing, or one of realization, or one of pity. This sound says nothing of brotherhood, of comradery, of recognition. It’s the sort of laugh a merchant would give a child before stealing the last of their coin for rotten food. It’s the sort of laugh a guardsman gives a beggar when they ask for mercy. It’s something of rejection, and something of victory, and something cruelly dehumanizing.

The sun is hot on Sokka’s face. This second dawn, however, comes anyway.

Behind the dragon, the second sun rises. The sun rises from the west, rises to meet its own double, and prowls down the ridge. The ground beneath its feet singes. Juddering in and out of existence wreathed in that sunlight, a humanoid silhouette phases in and out of the light, with one pair of broken wings dragging against the burning dirt and another pair made of smoke strung between lines of flame flapping uselessly against the wind.

It would be almost beautiful, if it weren’t so terrifying. If there wasn’t something about that light that promised something violent. If it didn’t promise revenge. If it didn’t promise a bloody hunt to whatever took what was its own. If the silhouette didn’t flicker in and out of being.

Sokka takes a step backward.

The dragon laughs again, and runs straight into the sun, climbing up the shoulders of the flickering silhouette and spreading its own wings out loosely until the shadow has three pairs of faulty wings, one broken and only anchoring it to the earth, one surrendering easily to the wind they should conquer with all of their conflicting light and darkness, and one miniature and made of the ground itself.

The dragon whistles, long and loud.

Sokka is frozen where he stands, unable to work up his voice to howl back.

The silhouette pauses in the middle of its pursuit of the far horizon and stares directly at Sokka.

For a second, Sokka stares at the sun, at the inconstant shadow eclipsing its light, at the three useless contradictions growing from its shoulders, and its blank face stares back.

Then wild colors burst out of one half of its head, like vines and streams and blood and sunbeams. On the other half, a thousand eyes flutter open. Each pair of featherless wings snap open to their full, terrifying spans with the sound of grinding stone, snapping bone, and hissing flame.

In the distance, fluttering around his ears as though distorted by running water or rushing wind or crunched gravel or crackling flames, a voice whispers-

_ (You’ll be marvelous) _

Sokka runs. He turns tail and he flees the same way as the Kingdom men as the world smears and singes around him and the second sun returns to its hunt.

-

Aang opens his eyes to a dragon staring down at him, red scales flashing against the sunlight that cuts through the ash. Before he can scream or protect himself, a familiar face comes between him and the scaled monster. A hand clamps on Aang’s shoulder.

“Peace,” Avatar Roku orders. “You called me, Avatar Aang. Fang follows me. Don’t upset him. You have enough dragons hunting you, you don’t need another.”

Aang swallows back the scream and sits up slowly. Indeed, where he started meditating is where he is now, but the whole world seems to be shifted to the left, the colors of nature are sickeningly bright and dulled simultaneously, and the unburnt trees on the edges look… hungry somehow.

He’s in the Spirit World. It worked.

“Please,” Aang blurts immediately. “Please, I need your help. You were a Bridge once. Please, give me your wisdom, or your spirit or- or something. There are people that need my help. There are friends that need my help. Our help- your help- whatever it is, but I don’t know how to do this.”

Roku grimaces, and removes his hand from Aang’s shoulder to tuck it into his sleeve. The edges of where his kneeling legs end and where the ground begins blurs into something vaguely nauseating to look at. He shakes his head. “I barely even remember being your age, Avatar Aang. I was not an overly remarkable twelve-year-old, you know. I consider that you _ are _ to be one of the many injustices that live in the waking world.”

Aang digs his hands into the ground to keep them from trying to tear out hair that isn’t even on his scalp. “I don’t want your pity.” _ (I don’t deserve it, says that little thing in the back of his skull that’s been taking in all of this fresh guilt and glutting itself. I let my world die, it says.) _ “I don’t want your pity, I don’t need your anecdotes, and I don’t have time for a philosophical discussion. I respect you immensely, Avatar Roku, but I can’t waste anymore time. Will you help me or not?”

Roku raises his eyebrows slightly, but schools his expression back to neutral almost before that tic registers. “Alright, then.” 

Aang blows out a relieved breath. Finally, someone who knows what they’re doing-

“I can’t help you, Avatar Aang,” Roku says, immediately shattering that brief thrill of success. “I can’t take your body and use it to fix your problems. My temple keeps me contained, barring events like the solstice, and even now it’s hard enough to _ speak _ with you. It’s too late for you to free me from it to save these people, and too dangerous besides that.”

The despair comes rushing back in, strong enough to knock out the floor of his mind and leave him hollow. He tries to form some words, any words, any syllable, any sound, but they all die on his tongue, in his throat, and crawl their corpses down to the heavy weight in his stomach.

“I’m sorry, Avatar Aang,” Roku says, infuriatingly calm. “I wish you never had to learn about failure at this scale, at this age. My wishes can do nothing, however. They certainly can’t help you in this, and they can’t help erase all that you’ve already experienced.”

Aang finds a few words that make it free of the graveyard that he is. “I’m alone in this.”

Roku shakes his head. “You aren’t alone, Avatar Aang. I am just one of many that are too far away and too weak to help.”

Aang clenches his jaw and closes his eyes briefly to hold back the spitting words and tears he wants to send hurtling out into existence. He’s wasting time here, talking to himself. “What _ can _ you do, then?”

Roku sighs and stands up using his dragon’s head as leverage. “I can tell you that the comet comes this summer. I can tell you that you already knew that. I can tell you that the Primordial Spirits are angry for the things you could not control, and I can tell that you know it even if you want to deny your blamelessness. I can tell you that you should not have been gone for so long, and I can tell that you already knew that; I can say that it was not your fault, and I can confirm that that doesn’t matter to the ones that want your blood, or even yourself most likely.” Roku pauses. “I can say that this forest once held a friendly Spirit, and I can say that I only feel malice from it now. I can’t teach you how to be the Bridge in one day, but I can teach you that anger in all beings comes first from fear.”

Aang tightens his hands on his staff and feels the world wavering around him, now that serenity is a far-off memory and urgency is a constant pulse in the back of his hollowed-out mind. “What can _ I _ do?”

Roku doesn’t smile, not really. “You can try, Avatar Aang. You can save those to seek to rescue. You can defend those you seek to protect. You can appease those you seek to subdue. But first, before everything else, you must _ try. _ That is all you can ever do.”

-

Liu Bo half wishes she waited a little longer to try to make up for her initial first impression on the Prince. There’s more cardio than she expected. It’s more relevant to her past than expected. It’s also getting a little bit hard to look at the Prince for too long without wanting to cross her eyes or throw up.

As it turns out, when the Prince gets angry, he starts sort of… ignoring the way his body is supposed to move. Just a little. There’s also the part with the scales crackling down the side of his neck and the way his teeth seem to be longer than his mouth should allow, which is also concerning, but a lot easier to ignore out of the corner of her eye.

As far as she can gather from the vague and concerningly calm words the Prince managed to express before he abandoned language, started looking a little bit like magma stuck in a human form, and started pursuing a trail Liu Bo couldn’t and still struggles to see, the Dragon of the West has been captured by earthbenders. She’s somewhere between angry and desperately afraid of that fact. The memory of Kingdom chains biting against her wrists is one that remains stark in her mind, and one she wouldn’t wish on anyone.

Liu Bo is a good little soldier, though, and she follows through on her commitments. Even if there is a large portion of her that wants to throw up and turn her tired muscles to better use running back to the safety of the ship, she keeps her body moving after the Prince’s steps. Matter over mind, in this case. Form over faculty. The muscle memory of drills, marches, retreats, and ambushes over the sense memory of the unyielding stone against her shins, the metal biting into her wrists, the gravel pressing into her arms, and the knives against her face.

Beauh periodically abandons the Prince’s shoulders to instead lope along beside him and occasionally lead their tiny group, whistling a thin howl every few minutes and grinding out a low, chittering sound that makes the already stiff hair on the back of Liu Bo’s neck shiver. The little creature seems at home on this hunt, digging its earthen claws into the soil and carving thin trails through the dirt. It is untiring and relentless, much like its similarly scaled master.

The Prince has a vicious sort of intent around him. Liu Bo gets the feeling she isn’t even feeling the half of it, but even that much claws insistently at the door of her mind like a beast just begging to be let in and slaughter. She hasn’t seen so much as an insect in the time they’ve been running after the General, and hasn’t heard a single birdsong in just as long. Every animal seems to have fled from the trail the Prince is blazing, leaving behind only the unnatural noises of Beauh and Liu Bo’s own pounding heart and heaving breaths to fill the tense air. 

It is both terrifying and satisfying, having that power next to her, carefully controlled and meticulously used to hunt down people like the ones that put her in chains.

She’s very, very glad she didn’t accidentally kill him when she first woke up.

The longer they pursue that invisible path after the Dragon of the West, the less invisible it becomes. A snapped twig there, a torn branch here, a withered leaf pressed into the ground. Gouges in the mud where stumbling boots found purchase, thin lines where chains dragged over the dirt. It’s hard to tell when, exactly, they felt what was coming for them, but the evidence of the rush after they experienced that animal fear of pursuit are all too clear. One part of her is very smug at their obvious terror, the other is worried for what will happen when that panic boils over and something breaks.

She would never ascribe the word weak to the Dragon of the West, Breaker of the Wall, but she never ascribed that word to herself, either, and she knows all too well what the hospitality of the Kingdom can be like. Whether or not someone’s bones are weak or not, the boulder crushes them all the same, and panic tends to cause a rockslide.

She hopes they get there in time to stop something heinous from happening. Not for the sake of the Dragon of the West, but for the sake of the Prince, and maybe for the sake of herself.

She has no idea what he’ll do to protect the only one of his bloodline that stands beside him, but she can imagine a few possibilities. She has even less of an idea of what he’ll do to take revenge on any that hurt his kin, but she can imagine those possibilities all the more vividly.

But for now, there is only her own pounding feet and heartbeat, the shifting, snarling form of the hunter she follows, and the low, chattering whistle of clay given life and claws and fangs.

For now, there is the hunt.

It is… oddly exhilarating.

-

Katara and Aang stand together at the path leading the way out of town. They stand on the crossroads and across a gulf and side by side. Aang, ready to make peace. Katara, prepared to wage war. Aang’s staff, dangerous and deadly, held loosely at his side. Katara’s acorn, innocent and lifegiving, clutched in a stiff grip by her heart.

The sun wavers over the treetops, sinking under the weight of the solstice.

The treetops shake and quiver as Hei Bai, corrupted under the weight of its grief-turned-anger, lumbers forward to exact unjust justice from those who could not help as its forest burned.

They stand. Three beings wronged by the sparking flames and stomping boots of the Fire Nation. Three beings that have lost everything and are scraped raw still, standing beside and across and with and against one another. There is comradery in tragedy.

Katara extends her hand. The acorn, still smeared in ash, nourished by the presence of a waterbender, has a single green sprout growing from it, reaching toward the fading sunlight.

“It’ll grow back,” Katara says. Aang echoes her.

Yes, there is the difference. Hei Bai still has the seeds of its children, of its kin, of its home. Hei Bai’s home will return. The same can’t be said for the children that stand between it and the people it would’ve destroyed for the simple sin of being powerless.

Hei Bai plods forward, shrinking and distorting to a facade of a normal creature with every step until it stands snout-to-nose with Katara, looking halfway between a polar bear and an orca-porpoise. 

Katara stretches out her hand, acorn rolling in the geography of her palm as she flattens it to present her proof.

Hei Bai opens its mouth to reveal sharp teeth and dips its head to take the sprouted acorn from Katara’s palm.

She keeps her hand steady and does not flinch away from the fangs as they brush her skin and take her evidence from her like a fox-cat scruffs its kits. It blinks at her once, slowly, then turns and shambles back into its grove.

Katara closes her eyes and breathes out a shaky breath.

When she opens them, Sokka is standing right across from her, looking unsteady on his feet, eyes wide and wild and shoulders held defensively.

She doesn’t hesitate to throw herself at him, wrapping her arms around the only family member that never left her until now. To feel him, solid and shaking in her arms. To reassure herself that he is real and she is not an only child.

To hear his heart beat in a frantic tempo and his lungs expand as he says, low and horrified, “We need to go.”

Katara pulls back, looks him in the eyes. She is so used to seeing the predator lurking around her brother’s irises that it is jarring to see prey cowering in them now.

“I think I saw the Bandit Prince,” he says, his words splashing arctic waters down her spine. “We need to_ go.” _

-

Iroh’s escape attempt had not gone very well. It was a valiant attempt, yes, made all the more risky but plausible by the frantic pace and panic of his captors as they became slowly aware of the blood in their veins and the sun setting and the second sun rising by their backs, but it was a failure.

If he could’ve broken away and returned back the way of his vessel, he likely could have escaped and his captors would have continued running for their lives. For good reason, of course. Iroh’s nephew is a force of nature, and that’s when the boundaries between Spirit and human aren’t blurred and fragile enough for even nonbenders to feel the terrifying strength of his nephew’s inner fire.

Unfortunately, given that Iroh’s captors managed to reacquire him before deciding to cut their losses but after realizing that the time they wasted in subduing him cost them any lead they may have been able to scrounge between them and the weight of the force pursuing them, their panic has transformed into a mix of suicidal certainty and frantic, rushed revenge.

All of which has crystallized into this moment, with his chains entirely and limbs partially bent into the dirt, knees and spine protesting at the angle they’ve been forced into, and several men ready to slowly crush and bleed him dry with any rock they can find.

He’d protest the lack of a fair trial if he hadn’t executed many of their brethren much the same way. It’s only fair, really. That doesn’t mean he didn’t fight tooth and nail before they immobilized him, strained to free his chains, breathed fire if they got close, and even now is doing his level best to follow the teachings of the dragons and Zuko’s own strange movements to make his death much more transactional in the moment instead of just paying back old debts of burnt earthbender blood.

The leader of his captors steps forward, the burn by his temple raw and irritated and bleeding sluggishly as he glares at Iroh, stomps his foot, and raises his hands to call a rock out of the ground. It floats over, shedding gravel as it goes, directly over his hands. Only the best of debilitating tortures for the most famous General to ever massacre thousands, after all.

They mean to make this as slow and painful as they possibly can.

What they don’t realize, however, is that the sound of grinding stone isn’t just from the rock they’re bending. It, in fact, sounds very similar to the noises their newest member of the crew made when Iroh scratched at its chin.

What they don’t realize, however, is that they are already out of time.

They really should have killed him immediately. It’s what Iroh would have done.

“I have a few last words before all I can do is scream,” Iroh says pleasantly. As expected, the rock poised to take away the use of his hands wavers in the air at his sudden, unexpected, perfectly civil conversation.

A low whistle echoes from the forest, a simulacrum of birdsong.

“You’re going to beg for your life?” The man scowls. The rock wavers even more, and more importantly, the ground around his wrists softens slightly as the man’s control slips.

Iroh shakes his head, and prepares to move. “No,” he denies. “But I suspect you will.”

A familiar snarl echoes out from the trees.

It all happens rather quickly.

He wrests his hands and legs out of the dirt in a motion that makes his joints twinge and scrambles back as quickly as he can. 

The rock crashes to the ground where his hands would have been as the newest addition to the crew launches itself out of the closest tree and latches onto the shoulder of the leader with its jaws while its spiked tail lashes out at the second closest of Iroh’s captors. 

A woman with heavy scarring across her face follows after Beauh, swiping a thick chain of fire across the main gathering of his captors before turning to guard Iroh. She forms a thin knife of fire in one hand and saws through the chains binding his cuffs with a technique he’s never seen before and a distant hatred somewhere in her expression.

Zuko, as always, appears where everyone least expects him to, and proceeds to burn the ground out from under them.

Iroh chooses to ignore the way the earth follows Zuko’s whims as he systematically brings down Iroh’s lovely group of escorts. He chooses to ignore the way that any frantically thrown rocks break down into gravel with the slightest of shifts of his weight.

This is Kingdom land, after all. This is where the Triple Spirits reside. Perhaps they are just lucky. Perhaps this is the work of the Triple Spirits themselves and not one they have blessed. After all, the barrier between Spirit and human is a fractured parody of itself today.

(Zuko is that fractured parody, too. Iroh chooses to ignore that as well.)

Zuko is a firebender. That the wind will listen to him when he petitions it, that the water will follow where he guides, that the earth will shift as he wishes, that is all coincidence and nothing more.

Iroh has many very pretty explanations if anyone asks him about what he ignores. He hopes he never has to give any of them.

Iroh straightens his spine and bends a thin wave of flame at one of his captor’s shoulders so they flinch out of the way of a particularly vicious wave of fire that Zuko spins into existence.

He is his mother’s son, but when danger comes for those he cares for, Iroh’s nephew is more than capable of the same viciousness as his father.

“As much as I hate to say it,” Iroh starts, “we do need to stop him before he kills anyone.”

The scarred woman - Liu Bo! That’s it! - doesn’t look particularly happy with that idea. If he remembers correctly, she had to endure the hospitality of the Kingdom for much longer than him.

“While I do want this war to end, I’m far from a pacifist, Ensign,” Iroh assures, as he sends one of his captors to the ground with a creatively burned tree branch and an assist from gravity. “My nephew can only take so much guilt, however, and I’d rather not allow any corpses on his conscience.”

Before they can do anything more than take a few steps closer to Zuko, Beauh sinks claws and fangs into someone’s calf and then claws its way up to their shoulder none too gently. It uses that as a jumping off point to meet the terror that is Iroh’s nephew and curl around his neck protectively. 

Zuko stutters to a stop, fire winking out. He blinks back to himself under the weight of the clay dragon.

Oh. Or that works, too. He wishes it hadn’t taken almost three years for the dragon to show up. It would have been useful many times over. Calming Zuko down is usually an ordeal and a half.

Everyone that isn’t unconscious on the ground takes the opportunity of everything not being on fire to turn tail and run.

“Nevermind,” Iroh says. “It seems like they’ve worked everything out.”

-

The Avatar’s bison rises into the air less than a mile away as Zuko and his Uncle turn back home to start the long trek back to the ship.

Zuko… honestly, he can’t even care. He should. But he doesn’t.

He’s already completed one hunt today, he can’t start in on another. At least, not until Uncle is safe. Not until his bones stop feeling like they’re caked in mud. Not until the solstice is over and he can stop feeling like there is a raw pit in his chest.

But he does raise a hand to twist it in the air and draw a symbol in flames up where the Avatar can see it.

The burn on his back. The five-rayed rising sun of the _ Siren. _

_ Hello, _ it says silently. _ I saw you. I know you were here. And now you know I was too. _

He turns back west, and he heads home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *tips down my sunglasses* *cheers with a glass of I Love Sokka juice* *tips sunglasses back up*
> 
> I can appreciate the fact that I wrote in a therapy animal for Zuko and, almost immediately, it decided it would start mauling people. I think, truly, that's what he needed.
> 
> I love being an author, because then I can think of the strangest visuals and just say that they happened and they do. The Spirit World kicks ass to write.
> 
> I made a [lullaby](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/627819160096866304/somebody-asked-me-if-i-would-make-a-lullaby-type) after someone requested one, so check that out to see me doing a song faster than it probably should be played and exactly where it shouldn't be with my range. I made the song, so I don't know why I made myself do that. But I definitely did.
> 
> Here's some [lovely art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/628096309151301632/so-i-made-a-bunch-of-art-of-your-nghmb-zuko-also) of both of the scaled dragons on board by red-robin-dies. I love them both dearly, and they could both kill a man if Iroh let them.
> 
> Things are about to get funky for me for a little bit, so I don't know when the next chapter is coming, but then again, I never do. Thank you all for your support! I'm going to try and respond to some comments now. <3


	24. Chapter 24

“Again.”

Her wrists itch, her hair is matted to her forehead, her legs shake where she stands, but for the three-hundred-and-ninety-sixth time today, she runs through the same katas.

_ Bend, twist, stomp, curl, shove, snarl, eat-the-sky-eat-the-ash-taste-your-failure-on-your-tongue, pounce, flow, reach- _

The lightning chases behind the line of blue fire. Both hit on the cold dais. Neither make a single spark that catches.

Azula stands, panting, sweat crawling down her back, tongue dry and body doing its level best to break. She won’t let it, but it still tries ever so valiantly every day.

“Again.”

Her ribbons burn lines into her skin, her fingers ache, her ankle throbs, but for the three-hundred-and-ninety-seventh time today, she runs through the same katas.

(This used to be easier)

“Again.”

398.

(This used to be harder, too)

“Again.”

399.

(This was so much easier when she had rage and she knew where to put it)

“Again.”

400.

(This was so much harder when she felt like she could still locate the shards of herself on the floor)

“Again.”

Speaking of the floor.

It is blessedly, impossibly cold against her cheek.

She gasps against it, wincing at the taste of her own ash, at the smoke stuffing up her nose and making her somehow dizzier. She presses her hand against it, the one with the better wrist, and pushes herself up.

Father is silent from behind her. She can feel his eyes on the back of her neck, where her hair curls messily at the nape and shines with sweat.

She stumbles back up to her feet and sinks into the stance.

“Again.”

  1. 402\. 403. 404. 405. 40-

The floor, again, mocking her. Soothing her. She doesn’t know if she wants it to be doing the latter or the former. She doesn’t need pity from the floor.

She pushes herself up, again.

She hears those words, again.

She does the katas, again.

Nothing happens, again.

Again. Again. Again.

  1. 432\. 4- what came next?

Again, her muscles screaming, her scars itching, her body moving and moving and moving.

Again, the floor against her ribs, against her knees, against her shins, against her palms as she denies it again and again.

Again, until her mind and the room are thick with smoke and ozone and she doesn’t even wait for her father's words anymore as he hurls out blue fire and deadly energy.

Again and again and again and again and-

The whistle cuts through the haze and fire and thunder crackling through her mind.

Her father’s eyes are gone from the back of her neck.

She doesn’t even know when he left. She doesn’t know how long she wasted throwing her every gasping breath and every scrap of cold rage out to the silent, flameless throne with no one there to prove herself to.

She doesn’t know how long she lost herself in this empty, horrible room with no one around to watch her burn out.

She’s done now, though. That’s not enough, not enough to excuse the time she’s lost and the ache she feels down to her core, but it’s the tiniest scrap of something to feed the monster at her center.

The whistle comes again.

Azula drops out of the stance and straightens up. Her chest heaves in the way a firebender’s never should. Her ribbons are loose around the elbow.

She can’t turn around. The second she does, she’ll fall flat on the floor all over again.

It’s not Zoti that walks up beside her with silent footsteps and offers a water pitcher, but one of her songbirds. Her face is narrow and hungry, and the blue ribbon that holds her hair up is one of the oldest embroidered designs.

Azula says nothing as the woman guides her down to the floor, as she wets a cloth and dabs it over the ash and soot and lipstick and sweat.

Once the water pitcher is unattended, Azula swipes it from the floor and tips it into her mouth.

It is sweet relief, honestly, for that single second, to feel like she is drowning.

She drinks it all.

The woman with the narrow face watches silently, eyes running over the places where her ribbons and wrappings are singed and torn, hands folded calmly in her lap.

Azula would throw the pitcher if her arms weren’t trembling and threatening to fold every moment. She wants to rage. She wants to be so desperately angry she could do anything.

But she can’t do anything, and she is tired, and she is hollow, and her anger is an empty thing she cannot latch her claws onto.

Instead, the woman takes it from her numb hands when it is empty, and rises from the stones to walk back out of the door.

Azula stays on the floor, panting, fingers twitching and eyes closed so she doesn’t have to see that fucking throne.

She loses time, again.

When she comes back to herself, Zoti is there, she is in her rooms, and there’s a fresh set of wrappings around both of her forearms. Zoti looks up almost as soon as Azula snaps into awareness. She offers Azula a cup of water. When that is done, she pours another, and another, until Azula raises her hand to refuse. It hurts like hell. She doesn’t wince.

“News?” Azula asks.

Zoti shakes her head. “Rumors, for now. Spirits and forests and islands burning. The banished one having an earthbender. The usual tales making the rounds. The Avatar going North.”

Rumors, for Zoti, are as valuable as an entire armory. She is meticulous with her rumors.

_ (Zuko left Zuko left just like mom and he didn’t come back for you no he didn’t save you he left you here-) _

_ (He knows what father does to his children and he still left me here how dare he how dare he how dare he-) _

_ (Look, look, look, look at his freedom and his friends and his fire and his mission and his family-) _

_ (Zuko is the favored child what does prodigy mean in a cage what does revolutionary mean in a prison what does powerful mean when I’m suffocating-) _

“Alright,” Azula says, softly, like she’s seen Zoti do a thousand times with her or any of the songbirds. That careful word in that careful tone that says nothing and everything all at one. “Anything else?”

Zoti nods. “Another songbird is ready to join the cause. Can you accept her tonight?”

Azula’s body is more pain than flesh. Her mind is more smoke and mirrors than memories.

She nods, anyway.

Maybe tonight, she’ll feel powerful.

Zoti leaves.

Azula closes her eyes, and loses time.

-

Sokka is still shaken by whatever he saw in the Spirit World. He won’t tell her what it was, and she won’t ask, but she can tell. It’s in the way he looks at the sun on the horizon like it’s going to eat him. It’s in the way he steps carefully on the earth like he expects it to grow fangs and snap him up. It’s the way he goes stiff and careful when the wind whispers enough to sound like words.

So the next time they land, they land next to a riverbank. The waters are safe for them. The waves may smack against Aang’s shins and respond to his unpracticed arguments with sluggish petulance, but he too is probably safe by the river when it is under her sway.

_ Hello, _ says the set of her shoulders.

The rushing waters crash out a greeting of their own.

Sokka, next to her, relaxes slightly. Aang, next to her, stores his staff away slowly like the river will rise up and swallow him whole if he moves too quickly. He might even be right, she can’t tell anymore.

She misses when Gran-Gran was there, with her slow, carefully practiced motions, with her wise eyes and certain heart. She was not fluent in the words the water speaks, no, and she could not teach Katara much, but she _ knew _ the waves in a way that Katara hasn’t learned yet. She could tell Katara where to go, what to do, what the Spirits thought.

Katara takes off her boots, distractedly, caught somewhere between the singing lull of the water and her own musings.

Gran-Gran isn’t here, though. Gran-Gran is guarding the village, like Katara was meant to when she took her oaths with war paint on her face, blood on the snow, chants in the air, and ice water spilling past her lips. Katara is the one dealing with Spirits, while Gran-Gran deals with potential invaders.

She shakes off her doubt and her pain into the river, letting it stumble and trip out of her fingertips and ease the burden on her spine.

_ Follow, _croons the sweep of her arm.

_ Relax, _ soothes the gentle sway of her heels against the riverbank.

_ Listen, _ whispers the curl of her fingers.

**_Obey,_** Katara proposes.

The water obliges. It swirls up her ankles with every waded step into the river, curls over her arms and soaks into her dress. It splashes playfully by Sokka, where he’s waded his way into the river too and gone smooth and relaxed once more, knowing that his sister has dominion here and he will not be taken again.

And, hesitantly, as she shifts it over and coaxes it forward, it even warily laps at Aang’s feet.

He backs away from it by a single step.

Somehow, someway, in that moment, all of the pieces click together for her. The reason why she can’t teach Aang. The reason why there is that gulf between them that remains still. The realization crawls down her spine like snowmelt, slow and cold and sweet.

Their previous lessons have mostly been futile attempts to have him make the water move. It’s mostly been whatever she could fit in when their boots were on the ground and the rivers were singing anything other than a war chant. The motions, the words beneath them, the subtleties in the way emotion could shape the body and so shape the water it spoke to.

That isn’t going to work. 

Aang, bless his heart, does not know war. He is learning quickly and painfully, but he doesn’t know it like Katara does. It doesn’t run in his blood with all of the ghosts of his culture. He’s still acting as though he’s praying to something that has the time and care to listen to him.

The wind is fickle and deadly and carries many tricks and lies with it. It had some measure of mercy, once. It may still have that. It most certainly has the bitter loneliness that drives people to wisdom and insanity and some middle ground between the two. Aang still has the first of those qualities. Katara isn’t so sure that he doesn’t have the second.

The ocean is mercurial and lethal and only knows the brutal, crushing truth of existence. The only mercy that can exist in a thing like the ocean is what creatures make of it. Whatever merciful, peaceful deaths it may have harbored once, now it knows only war canoes and ships spilling black death into the sky. Katara is much younger than the ocean. She has never known that mercy.

If Aang wants to speak the language of the ocean? Then he must learn how to argue with something that has only known death and suffering and war. Aang prays in poetry to a god that flutters on the wind and has all of the time in the world to listen to its favored, only child. Katara has no time for poems, and the ocean doesn’t either.

“Bend it,” Katara orders. The water around her limbs slithers again, as she shifts her weight against the lake bed.

Aang blinks, startled. “What?”

“I said bend it, Aang.” With a sharp shake of her wrist the water wreathing her splashes back into the river.

The water by his feet retreats back as Aang shakes his head, letting his anxiety and his refusal echo through his body and translate into a meaningless jumble of language. “I- I’ve tried, Katara, and I can’t. I don’t know how.”

“You’re right and you’re wrong,” Katara announces, straightening her spine and trying to channel the tone Gran-Gran always used before she launched into one of her life lessons. “You did try. And you don’t know how. But you can do this, Aang.” Katara smacks one palm against the water, and freezes the water that flies into the air into thick, sharp crystals that hang suspended. “I don’t need to remind you that you’re the Avatar. Some part of you, however distant, however dull, however dead, remembers how to speak with the water. You have that much proof. But shut that part of yourself up. Stop listening to yourself. Listen to me. Listen to the river. Hear us scream.”

Sokka slides away from her slowly, as he steadily clocks what she’s planning. He’s less at peace, now, but he’s still relaxed. This is her dominion. He is always safe here, even if there is a war on, or a battle on the cusp of breaking out. He trusts her.

She smacks the water again, freezes another set of icicles, and sends them spinning around her in concert with the rest. “This is war like nothing we’ve had before.” She punctuates the end of every sentence with another open palm slammed into the surface of the water and another garrison of ice joining her orbit. “This is blood and death, running into the rivers, running into the waves, poisoning the wells, and poisoning the people. This is change on a global scale that is chewing up people and spitting them into the surf. If you act like the ocean is still holy water, then you’re wrong. Supplication does nothing. Debate does nothing. It is beyond us and it is below us. There are no pretty prayers you can give to a thing that’s ate up enough red iron to dye this world scarlet.”

Aang rocks backward for a moment, then rocks forward, as if his body can’t decide if it’s afraid of what she’s saying or drawn to it. Push and Pull. Give and Take. Yes and No.

“The only thing you can do now,” she says, and raises her palm, “is to acknowledge what has been and must be given and taken, it is to sacrifice, and to bend, and to say what you want and _ mean it. _ Push and Pull, Aang. The ocean does not reward retreating backs. If you want to take its bounties, you must press forward, and the only way you leave those waters is if the waves push you to shore.” The icicles shiver and halt in their rotations. “Stop running away. Stop denying it. You have no control over the currents, so you have every power over them. Stop asking, stop begging, stop pleading to something that is too big and too blood-soaked to listen to sobs. Surrender, and fight tooth and nail. Let the river in.”

Aang’s eyes widen as he, too, realizes where this is going. He doesn’t run, though, like she half-expected him to. Instead, something flickers in his eyes. Not, fire, no. They are both too burnt and charred from that to meet each other with fire. No, his eyes gleam with something feverish and terrified and wondrous and thirsty, like sunlight striking a stream. His staff drops out of his hand and hits the mud with a wet noise.

“Meet me in the middle,” Katara says, and something shivers into place at the base of her spine, the frustrated thing that’s crawled over the back of her neck every time she couldn’t explain why Aang was bending the water wrong. “Walk into the water, Aang.” 

Firebending comes from the lungs, earthbending comes from the bones, and airbending comes from the mind, but waterbending?

Waterbending comes from the heart, from the rabbit-quick pace of the pulse and the raw, bloodied emotions that claw their way free.

Aang strides forward, stepping into the stream without a single word.

Aang meets her in the middle.

“Shift,” Katara calls, and says the words with her body at the same time, as stiff and removed as she can. “Adapt. Change.”

Aang’s eyes watch her movements, then repeats them dutifully. They are as emotionless as they were before, as practiced and intentional and perfect as always.

Sokka sinks his back against a tree, watching the both of them with his head tilted and fingers tapping out a drum beat against his knees.

In time with that beat, Katara rolls her shoulders, bares her teeth, and stretches out her fingers. She embraces the riverrun of her pulse, the chill of her skin, the smooth sensation of her element coursing around her, confused and searching.

“Shift,” Katara calls again, and this time she flows and crashes into each motion, as unstoppable and inevitable as the tide. “Adapt. Change.” The words spill out of her mouth and out of her limbs without any thought. “Surrender. Fight.”

It’s an odd thing to notice, but somehow it’s only now that she realizes both of the last words are the same motions.

Aang stands still for a second, until the only sound is the wind whistling and the river burbling. Then, like she knew he would, he closes his eyes, reaches out, and says the same words with every one of his helpless, guilty, terrified, angry veins.

The water rises to meet him, curious and excited for the first time, responding to his reaching fingers of chi, responding to that honest, bloody hurt he carries and now washes out in the stream like any other cut.

“You are liquid and flowing,” she says, she agrees, she soothes, she orders, she concurs, she demands, she commands, she announces, she gestures, and remembers speaking these same words when she cracked his prison open and dragged him under the summer sun. When she forced him free of his cocoon and melted down the glacier walls that would keep him safe and damn the rest of them. When she damned him to save the rest of them without knowing it. “Dripping and dropping. The Pull. The Push.”

“I am water,” Aang says, his hollow bird bones straightened from their constant, non-threatening curl into something more certain, more swaying, more solid, more fluid, more ever-changing.

Sokka’s drumbeat echoes at the base of her skull, behind her sternum, against her wrists, pounding with a _ PushPullPushPullBaBumBaBumBaBum- _

“Bend it,” she orders again.

_ Be it, _ Aang mouths to himself.

He throws a palm down, too, and strikes the river. His own set of icicles rises, shaky, behind him.

“Good,” Katara says. “You surrendered. You let the river in. Now, fight.”

She sends her hand forward, and her weapons follow her gestures, follow the way she yearns for this, follow the ever-changing, ever-constant beat of her heart.

They meet each other in the middle of the stream, eye to eye, palm to palm, on this path of the crossroads, the gulf and the grove and the world itself gone except for the roar of their blood in their ears and water at their fingertips. These two creatures painted in the blood of their peoples, with the burden of a culture weighing down their fragile, young spines, washing out the wounds that they can never heal in the flood they make.

The river laughs. Sokka might be laughing, too. Maybe they all are.

(This is the closest they get to playground amusements, the three of them. Rejoicing over war games in a river, sparring with teeth bared and blood pumping and messy words spilling from their limbs with messy hurts.

_ How innocent, how adorable. How humbling, how tragic.) _

-

Cook comes back from the impromptu shopping trip very, very drunk. At least by anyone else’s standards. In Cook’s case, he’s tied his topknot slightly wrong and misses one in every ten steps, but is otherwise completely fine, because that man has lived off of bootleg alcohol since forever.

Jee only notices this much because Cook is making a beeline for him, and even from forty feet off Jee can smell the bar on him.

“Bad news,” Cook says, somehow grumpier than usual. “The Lieutenant from down South? He must have a lot of connections, because he just netted himself the rank of Captain. I’d say blackmail, but I don’t trust that man to be good enough at subterfuge for that.”

“Zhao’s a Captain now?” Jee says, louder than he meant to. Immediately, the people in earshot either groan or boo.

Cook nods. “Yeah, and I’m willing to bet he’s about to be a real pain in the ass. Moreso than usual.”

Jee blows out a breath. “Didn’t think that was even possible.”

-

Azula comes back to herself to the quiet murmur of voices outside of her door.

She knows how this goes. She knows the ritual. She knows the words that are being exchanged.

Oaths, between the Matron and her newest songbird. Promises. Threats.

She isn’t meant to hear any of them. She is not the palace. Only the stones are meant to hear what they say. Only the stones and those that are sworn to them, bound to them by blood and bone and soul to die upon them.

She forces her stiff body out of her bed. Her burnt wrappings from today have been cut to the proper lengths where the damage isn’t bad and lain over the foot of the frame. She grips the bedposts while she runs her fingers over them each, tasting the lightning trapped within them.

She makes her decision, and then she leans against the edge of her mattress and waits.

Waits, as the words exchange soft and heavy and holy on her doorstep.

Waits, until Zoti’s shuffling footsteps leave down the hall.

Waits, until another’s steps echo as they walk up to her door.

Waits, in that pause.

Waits, until the whistle sounds.

Only then does Azula whistles back the thin, mournful reply.

Only then does her door open, and the newest songbird step inside.

She takes fourteen steps forward, one for each of Azula’s years, and then, without breaking eye contact with Azula, lowers herself to her knees.

Azula pushes herself off of the bed. She snags her chosen ribbon on the way. She moves to stand before the girl.

Then, as they all do, the girl reaches into the folds of her skirts, and produces a knife.

“You’ve sworn to the palace,” Azula says, voice still cracked from all of today’s smoke. “You’ve sworn to these stones. You’ve sworn to the echoes within.” Azula extends one hand. “Are you willing to swear to me?”

The girl flips her grip on the knife and offers it, hilt first, to Azula’s waiting hand.

Azula takes it and calmly, patiently, slowly, presses it against the girl’s neck.

She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t move at all. Her breathing is steady. Her hair is unbound. Her eyes are sharp.

Azula leans forward. “As you protect me, so do I protect you,” she whispers. “As you speak for me, so will I speak for you. You will sing sweetly in the darkest of times, and you will chant war cries when I bid, and I will guard your throat while you do. So long as these stones keep us here, this I will swear.”

“This I will swear,” the girl says, in that same soft-voiced tone every songbird seems to learn.

Azula pulls the knife back. It will join the rest. For now, it slips smoothly into her belt as she reaches forward and ties up the songbird’s hair with lightning and blue fire.

The girl rises to meet her hands as they pull away. She bows, low and careful, and flutters soundlessly out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azula: Watch me master my trauma, bitches! *hardcore dissociates*
> 
> Katara, to Aang: So, I've realized we've spent the majority of our roadtrip from hell running, but I'm thinking there's some kind of difference in thought between us. Because I'm pretty sure you're just running away from whatever's chasing us, while I am very much running toward the North. So. Let me throw some icicles at you while talking about genocide and contradictions and see if that works.
> 
> I am wildly ecstatic to receive my first 3-D piece of fanart courtesy of blaiddthewolf, who has previously made sketches of Agni and Beauh and has now made [the most amazing clay statue](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/628986004824637440/behold-beauh-oh-my-god-spiky) of our favorite wildly violent therapy animal! I definitely did scream lightly for a full hour while jumping up and down upon getting this.
> 
> I got a lot of inspiration from my [spotify playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6mBd9AQgaAWKyUeaSZGUr6?si=vh8qC2klS4-0gFSwUNiRiA), but not with an awful lot of writing. As, uh. Will shortly become evident.
> 
> Words were hard, but art was disturbingly easy. Here they are:  
[Chapter 24 art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/629939721313927169/oh-let-the-river-in-burst-the-dams-and-start) (warning, does feature an anatomical heart if you don't want to see that)  
[Aang and Zuko pt. 1](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/629939724069601280/so-you-feel-entitled-to-a-sense-of-control-and)  
[Aang and Zuko pt. 2](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/629939728053092352/we-fight-every-night-for-something-when-the-sun)  
[Chapter 23 art](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/629939717437325312/chapter-23-zuko-single-images-and-extra-sky)
> 
> EDIT: now with a [discord server!](https://discord.gg/z4g2dAK)


	25. Chapter 25

Zuko is back to pacing again. He’s also back to staring at the horizon, eyes searching for the distant silhouette of the Avatar’s bison or any incoming Nation ships. Not even his lovely new playmate seems to calm him down.

Iroh sighs and sips at his tea. The pirates from the last port had a peculiar blend liberated from some merchant ship, and Iroh has yet to decide if it’s actually as horrible as he thinks it might be. Much like how he has yet to decide if Zuko’s current approach to his new circumstances is as bad a strategy as it currently seems.

Zuko is approaching this in the most pedantic, roundabout, technically correct way possible. Iroh would be proud of him if he weren’t so desperately worried for what it’s doing to his nephew.

See, here is Iroh’s understanding of the current situation: The Spirits are hounding on his nephew to exact their century old revenge on someone who, at the very least, is quite child-shaped. His nephew was fairly on board with that concept because of the incident down South, but has since grown much more wary of it, having almost done the same as the Avatar on Kyoshi Island and having briefly discussed the Avatar’s largely benevolent visit to the town in the center of the forest with its residents. Zuko is capable of ignoring or denying the Spirits, but it is an exceptionally uncomfortable experience.

Here is his understanding of Zuko’s current plan: Chasing after the Avatar as a distant menace, forcing the Spirit to keep running until it is out of Fire Nation waters. Appeasing the Spirits with the presence of the chase, but angering them with its denied completion. Following the letter of their request, but not its spirit. Keeping his distance so he doesn’t do harm to collateral, but keeping close to ensure the Avatar is never stationary enough to be captured.

Here is his understanding of the effects: An increasingly exhausted looking bison in the distance, an increasingly watchful crew, and an increasingly agitated, jittery, and distressed nephew.

Here is his understanding of his current feelings on the matter: homicidal rage (entirely expected, as he hasn’t stopped feeling it since he watched his first soldier die in front of him), exasperation, worry (the both of those have been close companions ever since the Agni Kai, and both seem to chase each other in an ever-heightening dance), and an unusual sort of determination.

Iroh is the Grand Lotus of the White Lotus. He is one of the leaders of the preeminent organization meant to preserve the Avatar’s mission. He, by all rights, should be steering his nephew off of this path and letting the Avatar thrive, for the good he is meant to bring.

He, however, will not be doing that.

He can justify it a thousand times and million different ways to others if he has to, but he is not his niece. He does not make a habit of lying to himself.

He cares more about Zuko than he does about the Avatar, and if the Avatar has to suffer so Zuko can find some measure of peace? Well, Iroh has done worse things for much less. 

(For his nephew, he would hunt the boy down himself and bring him back in chains. He would bring him back in a funeral shroud, too.)

(There was once a time he would have done the same for his brother if he asked, but they have long since left that part of their lives behind and scorched it too thoroughly to be recognizable.)

(If he has heard his brother’s whining tones in Azula’s own pleading  _ ‘Zuzu’,  _ that is between him and himself. If he misses when  _ ‘aye-aye’ _ was something he and his brother called each other and not something his men said to acknowledge his orders, he buries it deep, and he waits until that old grief can be unearthed and burned, just like Lu Ten.)

He has long since given up on trying to be what most people would consider to be a good person. 

(He has given up on being a good brother, as well.) 

He has not given up on trying to be a good uncle.

Zuko twitches slightly as the distant silhouette of the bison drives east and slowly dips out of the sky into a thicket of trees. His hands flex at his sides, trembling as those thin lights crawl their way down his wrist. The hair at the back of his neck glows slightly from within. Beauh wraps further around, as if it can smother the light and the pain that must come with it.

Zuko is not throwing up water. But that just means that Iroh has no idea how awful it actually is for his nephew. Given that, at least sometimes, he seems  _ relieved _ to be vomiting parts of the ocean, Iroh has no idea what the other ways of Spirits signaling displeasure even remotely feels like. Communication is not Zuko’s strong suit. It’s not exactly Iroh’s either. The imperial family is not good at discussing their own hurts until they are taking it out on everyone around them.

“Zuko,” Iroh calls out.

Zuko stays staring and drawn for a second, leaning toward the rail and the distant forest, before he breaks that connection and turns with a grimace. His shoulders are only slightly hunched, but even that much is a concession.

Iroh pats the seat across from him and pours out another cup of the tea. He keeps his body language completely relaxed as he waits for his nephew to inch closer and take the offering. It’s always a careful balance for Iroh to take, in understanding that his nephew is almost old enough to go out and die on the frontlines as a soldier and also an unknowable being trapped in a human skin and also a scared child. 

It would be so easy to let go completely, like he did with Ozai and Azula. It would be so easy to cling on, like he did with Lu Ten and a younger Zuko. It is incredibly difficult to allow for both to occur simultaneously, but let it never be said that Iroh doesn’t learn from his mistakes - eventually.

So, Iroh has two equally important decisions to make right now: whether or not to chase after the Avatar and fix whatever is scraping at his nephew, and whether or not this tea is awful or not.

Ironically enough, the answer of one hinges on the other. Sort of. The tea is, objectively, horrible. Whatever blend they chose does not work in any way. It does, however, seem to be an excellent, disgusting, very bitter distraction from the regular aches of an old, abused body that’s seen too much war. It’s bad enough to serve a purpose, really.

Zuko slides into his seat soundlessly and picks up his cup carefully. He drinks from it equally carefully and makes the exact face Iroh thought he would. That expression also smooths out into something almost relieved, just like Iroh feared it would.

“How is it?” Iroh asks lightly. He takes a sip of his own and carefully masks the brief grimace he wants to take.

Zuko takes another sip, and something knotted up in his shoulders relaxes at the taste of the stuff. “Good,” he says.

_ Distracting enough, _ Iroh infers.  _ Good in that this is a temporary bad that distracts me from the other awful things. _

Yes, the imperial family is very bad at communication, but Iroh has gotten somewhat decent at translation over the years.

Iroh makes eye contact with one of the nearby crew members and tilts his head subtly toward the shore. Luckily, the woman he’s signalling is one of his old men, and she interprets his order as what it is as she heads over to speak with the navigator.

“I’m glad to hear that, Zuko,” Iroh says, mentally noting down to search for the packaging again and get more of the same variety. It will work for both the bad days and also to cause a few minor diplomatic incidents if he feels like it. “I do need a few more varieties that I couldn’t purchase back at the pier, and I’ve been told that Gaipan has some truly fascinating blends. I’d like it if you could join me. I did get kidnapped last time I went alone, after all.”

Zuko glances up, expression conflicted and seeming to fight against itself in every available arena.

Iroh takes another sip of the tea and works to keep his expression completely calm as he hits a particular rough patch in this cup. “If we need to stop to participate in a smidge of hunting, I wouldn’t mind.”

Zuko takes his own sip. His fingers shake a little around the cup. “I don’t know if… if that’s what I want.”

Iroh infers from that and asks, “But is it what you need?”

Zuko doesn’t say anything in response.

Iroh places his cup down. “I’d like to make port tonight, just so we can continue herding the Avatar away from anyone else hunting him. I’d hate to drive him into Zhao’s arms.”

Zuko’s foot twitches on top of the boards. He remains silent. He hasn’t taken another sip of the tea, though, which is generally good.

“Tomorrow, I’ll head into town,” Iroh explains calmly. “It is up to you whether or not you join me. It is up to you whether or not you go to find the Avatar when we arrive. It’s up to you how long we stay. I will not make any choices for you, but I won’t let you suffer in silence without a choice to be seen.”

Zuko pauses. He nods. He takes another sip of tea.

Iroh mimics him. The taste of it almost distracts him enough from the pain in his chest he gets every time he sees his nephew suffer.

(If Iroh could ask one question and get a definite, absolute answer, it would be this:

_ How do I stop raising martyrs and monsters?) _

(As it is, all he has is the wraith of who his brother used to be at his back, the memory of his son wrapped around his neck, the specter of his niece waiting in the distance, and his ghost of a nephew sitting before him)

(As it is, he can’t help but feel like he is failing)

-

Things have been easier since the day at the river. Sokka has felt a little more settled, Katara seems a little more sure of herself, and Aang seems to have changed gears from running away from the South to running towards the North. 

It’s not permanent, of course. Sokka still stiffens when the sun glares just the wrong way, or when a rock looks a little bit like it might have wings. Katara stays true to the ocean by swelling with pride and confidence in one moment and, in the next, retreating back to old uncertainty and grief. Aang still glances over his shoulder, afraid to see Fire Nation colors or that wooden ship in the distance, and still jitters with that anxious airbender energy on the worst days.

They’re making good time, though. Their pace is quick enough that they could probably make it before another month is up.

Their speed is a detriment to their ride, though, and Appa is too tired to fly for at least another day. The best thing they can do is stay hidden in the forest, stay moving, and keep their eyes open until they can take back to the skies again.

Appa is following behind them at a lumbering, surprisingly quiet pace, rooting mushrooms out of the dirt with gentle care. Momo, meanwhile, has been fluttering between every available roost with wild energy.

“Katara, can you take the lemur off my head before he starts chewing my wolf tail?” Sokka asks, wincing at the little claws digging into his scalp.

Katara glances over, hand already half-raised, and cringes. “Oh, too late.”

Indeed, when he risks it and pulls Momo off of his head, the lemur comes out with wide eyes and a few wet stray hairs caught in his mouth.

Sokka sighs. “Well, I can already tell today is going to be great.” He plops Momo back like a sentient hat, because having the lemur enamored with his hair at least keeps the little moron out of their food supplies. “Appa’s too tired to fly, it is as humid as soup, and I’m about to go bald at fifteen thanks to an overgrown rat.”

Aang shrugs, looking back. “Well, it could be worse?” he offers.

He then proceeds to trip over a root, fall through some nearby bushes, and land face-first in the middle of a Fire Nation encampment.

Katara uncorks her waterskin with lightning fast speed as Sokka pulls out a fan and a boomerang. All of the soldiers in the camp look up to see one heavily armed teen, one making the beginning of a bending gesture, and one face-first on the ground.

“You were absolutely right,” Sokka says, mouth running on autopilot while he starts panicking. “It definitely just got worse.”

-

When Jet was a kid, (when Jet still had a home) the neighbors would lock their doors when he went out. It wasn’t always meant as an insult, but it was always a precaution.

His mother used to say that he would’ve fit better born on a battlefield than delivered underneath the roof of his home. She used to brush her hands through his hair and teach him how to use a knife, how to use the violence that comes so easy to him. She used to teach him how to fight dirty, how to do the most damage with the least risk and come out with bloodied blades and fangs.

A son of battle, they called him. War’s whore, they called his mother. She would say nothing to them, would do nothing to sway their opinion of her. He would snarl and track how they stepped, how they glared, where their weak points and fear were.

(His father is an unnamed man who’s likely either a corpse in the ground or ash in the dirt at this point, a soldier for some side of this gods-damned conflict. His mother was paid well for her services and paid even better to keep quiet about whatever dog’s breath either faction spit over the pillow. Paid well enough to settle down when she decided she would keep him.)

She used to give him kindness to treat and soothe the cruelty that crawled its way through him. She used to give him steel to tame the constant ticking beat of danger in the back of his skull.

Then she and everyone who locked their doors when he ran the streets like they were lines on his palm burned. All of her kindness bubbled and popped into nothing, and all that was left behind was the steel.

Steel that grips heavy in his hands now, as all of his fellow rebels unite with him to scrub the ashmaker scum from their forest.

He ignores the three teens in blue and yellow for now. They all look too young and foreign to be recruits for the Nation. Then again, they do get younger every decade or so. He decides to keep his guard up.

Not for long, however, when the girl in blue twists the arm of the man closest to her and shoves him with near-impossible strength, knocking him out against a tree, and when the boy in blue next to her throws out some flat weapon that hits two of the next closest ashmakers in their buckets and sends them to the ground. 

The boy in yellow is on thin ice, since he’s still trying to get out of the dirt, but the other two? He can see the war in them too. He wouldn’t be surprised if people hurried to secure their homes when they walked near. He wouldn’t be surprised if they had some scarlet staining their teeth too.

Quicker than expected, the camp is cleaned of ashmakers and Smellerbee is silently, covertly making her rounds with a knife that fits well between the bottom of ashmaker buckets and the top of their armor. Pipsqueak follows her, much less covertly, just in case one of the prospective corpses is still fit to fight.

Jet waves to their new guests, sword flashing through the air and helping to distract from the less-than-appetizing business behind him. “Hey there,” he calls out, teeth gleaming in tandem with his blade. “Welcome to my forest. Thanks for helping clean out the ashmaker infestation.”

The two in blue immediately push the one in yellow behind them. The girl is a slight step behind the other, who Jet is pretty sure is her brother. Jet mentally marks the brother down as the leader, the sister as his second, and the boy as their weak point.

Jet drops the sword from his waving hand, spreading it to show just how nonthreatening it’s meant to be. Urging them to look at this small surrender instead of his versatile grip on the second blade. Compelling them to see this as a concession and not a way that will let him signal his men better if they decide to attack. “Relax. My name’s Jet. I run the Freedom Fighters here. We’re not going to hurt you.”  _ Unless you give us reason to, _ Jet adds silently.

The brother stays in the same ready position, even as his second steps to the side and in front of him. “Thanks for the assist, Jet,” she says, voice carefully neutral. He can’t help but notice how she doesn’t introduce herself.

Jet shrugs expressively, dragging his remaining blade in the dirt and keeping half an ear to the cleanup happening behind him. “Eh, you just gave us an opening. You’re not too shabby at fighting either.”

She takes another further step forward, with a strange swaying gait he can’t place. Maybe she’s a dancer, then. “War has gotten its bloodied, grubby hands over all of us,” she says smoothly, eyes like ice locked with his. “We just pay it back in kind.”

Jet chuckles, and keeps the eye contact as he crouches to pick his sword back up. He knows an accord when he sees one. “A woman after my own heart, then. Are you passing through, then, or are you looking to help with the cause?”

The brother steps forward this time, standing side by side with his fellow in blue. “Passing through, eventually. Our ride needs to take a breather, though, so if there’s anything simple you need help with…” he makes eye contact out of the corner of his eye with his sister, and comes to an accord with her, “I’m sure we could do something. We’ve got our own problems with firebenders.”

Jet laughs, head tilted back, the sound ugly and only halfway to humorous. “Don’t we all, friend. You can come back to camp with us, help organize the supplies-”

Smellerbee makes a noise of alarm at his back, and he turns to see one of the soldiers that was supposed to be a corpse already pulling its arm back, its palm full of licking flames.

Before he or Pipsqueak can do more than take a single swift step toward the confrontation, a stream of water lances out from behind him, wrapping around the wrist of the soldier and forcing it to the ground. He doesn’t pause in his step as he slams the hilt of a sword against the ashmaker’s helmet, dropping it to the floor.

When he turns, the girl is a few steps further along than her brother, her body held precariously posed in something just this side of natural, with a thin whip of liquid held in place streaming out of her waterskin.

Oh. A bender, then. Not a dancer.

Oh. He can work with this.

The kid in yellow pushes forward before Jet can say anything, opens his mouth like he’s about to say something, and then stops with a flinch as Smellerbee finishes the job on the ashmaker like she always does. He pales and backs up a step. His whole head is covered in a cloak, which seems like a bad idea with how humid it is in the forest today.

The waterbender flicks her wrist, and the water flies back into her canteen. She glances once at the boy in yellow. “We won’t do any more fighting,” she tells Jet after a long pause, as though he can’t see the way battle walks in her skin. “However you keep your forest free isn’t our business. We’ll take your protection though, for as long as we have to rest, and we’re willing to work for that in any way that doesn’t mean-” she gestures broadly at the now scoured encampment, at the collapsed metal forms, “-this.”

Jet smirks, the long-familiar, knife-sharp thing his mother taught him how to make. “I’m sure we can come to an arrangement that lets you keep your hands clean, princess. Can I get a name?”

Her eyes are glacial. “I’m a Chieftess, not a princess.”

Jet shrugs, planting one blade into the dirt. “Fair enough.”

Surprisingly enough, it’s the boy in yellow that speaks up first. “You can call me Shen,” he says, with a little bow. He has strange eyes, too, like the others. The color of an ash cloud rising above his old village, the color of a tempest brewing.

“Nice to meet you, Shen,” Jet says, swinging his other sword over his back. “Grab all the supplies you can. The rest of you can introduce yourselves on the way.”

-

“So, we don’t trust them, right?” Sokka asks quietly from the back of the group as the Freedom Fighters lead them through the forest and away from the now picked-apart and demolished camp.

Katara shakes her head. Aang shakes his as well, but he hardly needs to. He’s said enough by handing out his fake name again. It really is an efficient system for the group to decide who is automatically frozen out of the trust zone.

“We don’t,” Katara says with a sigh, and fiddles with the cork of her waterskin. “But we do what little we can to make sure there’s never another burnt forest like last time before we have to leave.”

Aang keeps his hood pulled low and the grip on his staff and Appa’s reigns tight.

(Mercy whenever possible. Kindness whenever possible. Nonviolence whenever possible.)

(He hates to think it, he abhors the thought, he despises it with all of his being but-)

(But he has to wonder.)

(How far has ‘whenever possible’ shifted? How badly has mercy, kindness, and nonviolence been burnt and buried and drowned over the years of bloodshed he was absent from?)

“We do what we can,” Aang says, and goes silent again.

He does hate that he can’t know what he can do until he’s already done it and has to pick up the pieces in his own wake. 

He does hate that he’s trailing after a group that contains someone that looks to be his own age, who he watched kill an unconscious man right in front of him.

He does hate a lot of things about everything that is happening.

Appa just has to rest. The forest just has to be safe. Aang just has to stay moving. He has to stay doing good. He just has to keep justifying that he’s breathing and bending the air his fellows can’t anymore.

If he keeps moving, everything will be fine.

If he keeps moving, they can’t catch him.

(And somewhere, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, in the click-click-clack of frantic, tiny paws skittering out of the way of the fox-cat, he knows that he is being hunted.)

(He does not know what will happen when the hunt is done.)

(He does not know if this is the paranoia drilled into him since he was young, the fresh fear he’s felt since he woke up, or something perfectly justified.)

(He does not know about the Prince standing by the shore of the same ground he walks on now, with a golden band on one arm and a cloth over one eye and a scar on his back that glows with a fluctuating, seething mass of color.)

(He does not know of the Agni-blessed thing curled around the Prince’s shoulders, teeth sharp and blooded.)

(He does not know about the General quietly playing Pai Sho and watching the darkening sky with eyes sharp enough to kill.)

(He does not know about the three dragons waiting on the wings, waiting on the edges, ready to claw their way onto land.)

(He does not know any of it, because he is twelve and terrified and trying so very hard to grow up enough to make it all stop hurting so much.)

Aang just keeps walking. He keeps shuffling toward the base, not away from everything he fears. He has to be water for now, rushing toward a purpose, and not air, rushing away from the heights. He has to.

He doesn’t know what will happen when he stops running.

He is terrified of that eventuality.

For now, he just moves, and he hopes it's the right way, and he hopes it's the right thing.

Hopes, so desperately, that he can make it clear of this forest without losing any more of himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come on, canon gave me some fantastically morally gray child characters. Did you think I wouldn't go big or go home?
> 
> Also! I have a [discord server for this fic](https://discord.gg/z4g2dAK) now! We're sixteen people strong already which is. Fuckin wild. Y'all are such a nice community, I thought it might be fun to have a place to interact with you guys more. Thank you all for being so overwhelmingly lovely. I would like to thank the lovely angst session we had for giving me some good Iroh angst fodder.
> 
> Speaking of discord servers! Here is one thing that they can do: get me to write more songs. Thalia, aka slytherpuffrules, requested an Azula song if possible, and it worked. Here's the [link](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/630740587569725440/someone-on-the-discord-server-expressed-an) to it on tumblr, but it should also shortly be up on the [youtube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVijaFdLcG1yFqbRDpNDoy0INiUbWfJ6J) as well.
> 
> I am excited to see where I can take this arc.


	26. Chapter 26

None of them sleep well that night.

Not Aang, who still sees the blood on the forest floor when he closes his eyes and the cheers of the Freedom Fighters as they celebrated the deaths of living, breathing, thinking people.

Not Katara, who hears whispers in the damp drizzle outside the roof and understands nothing but that it sounds as if it’s on the edge of laughter and the cusp of slaughter.

Not Sokka, who keeps one hand on a dagger and the other wrapped tightly around the compact of war paint Suki gave him.

Not Jet, whose skin crawls with the aching keen of war and the proximity to new, untested people that have not proven their loyalties.

Not the other Freedom Fighters, who have killed today and can’t shake the tremors from their hands.

Not Iroh, in his rooms, lighting incense for his son and contemplating whether or not he has done what is best.

Not Zuko, clinging to the mast, staring out across the rain-woken sea that whispers threats to the forest that holds his quarry, that whispers threats to the one who does not chase its prey.

Not the crew of the Siren, playing restless games of cards in their overstuffed rooms, waiting for whatever orders come from any of the dragons they serve with.

No, none of them sleep well, but life continues, and the sun rises, and they all grimly wait with open eyes for whatever may come.

-

_ (come, come, hunt, hunt, hurt, hurt, come, come, rush, rush, move, move, HUNT HURT HUNT-) _

_ (Listen To The Water Listen To The Rain Why Why Why Do You Not Obey You Reckless Child Take Our Revenge We Have Waited Long Enough-) _

(no, no i won’t. i do not listen to you. i will not move i will not move you cannot make me i am the shore you can drag and destroy but never force to do your bidding i am the fire you can never drown i am the empty sky your clouds will never touch-)

_ (i am the sea i am the rain i am infinite hunt for me do what i cannot hunt for me hurt for me-) _

_ (Listen You Fool Do What We Ask And You Will Not Hurt I Am The Moon In The Sky And So Long As You See What Is Mine And Deny Me I Will Not Stand For This-) _

(no.)

-

In the darkness, something that skitters throws back its hundred heads and laughs and doesn’t stop until each of its thousand eyes are crying.

-

In the morning, when Jet goes to patrol and asks for Sokka to join, Katara has to hold herself back from leaping forward and joining them. She’s only stopped by the way Sokka’s heel shifts against the boards, the way his right shoulder rises.

Katara is a waterbender. Sokka is her brother. They are fluent in body language, and she can see the way his stance screams,  _ stay back, protect Aang _ even if no one else can.

For now, she doesn’t open her mouth and say anything. For now, she doesn’t stand up and follow. For now, she just wraps one hand around Aang’s wrist and draws swirling patterns over his pulse. For now, they have to be stagnant, no matter how it chafes. For now, Appa needs his rest, and they need to leave here alive. For now, Sokka will be the one testing the waters.

For now, at least.

A river is not still for long.

-

The Prince is soaking wet when Bo twists his way up through the ropes to meet him. He hasn’t broken his thousand mile stare at the forest, either. He hasn’t moved, actually, since Bo went down to catch a few restless hours of sleep except to blink. Even that much is too rare for comfort.

“Sir?” Bo tries. When that doesn’t work, he swings around to crouch on the same part of the mast the Prince is perched on. “Sir, your uncle thinks you should come down.”

The Prince’s hair is matted to his forehead. He’s shivering, slightly. He doesn’t look away from the forest. He doesn’t react. Around his shoulders, with spikes and scales softened by the rain, Beauh clings tighter and regards Bo with blank eyes.

“Sir,” Bo says, and holds out a hand, “come on.”

The Prince doesn’t react but to blink again.

Bo blows out a breath. 

Beauh uncurls from around the Prince’s neck, revealing the slight glow at the back of his coat and the thin scales curled around his neck like a choking hand. The clay dragon twists up and tugs on the now damp, patterned cloth over the Prince’s left eye, trying to free the tight, elaborate tangle in vain. It makes eye contact with Bo again, in that same meaningful, empty stare.

Well, good for them that Bo knows his way around knots.

“Don’t pitch me over the edge of this boat,” Bo says, part-prayer, part-request, part-muttering. He scoots closer and undoes the complicated knotwork the Prince has worked his veil into, doing his best not to tug on the hair that parts of the twist are anchored on.

When it comes loose in a wet pile in Bo’s hands, he winces to see the left side of the Prince’s face. The scar is red and irritated where it isn’t glowing blue and purple and cracked. The pupil on the side is blown wide, eclipsing the gold almost entirely.

Beauh skitters forward, leans its neck out, and nips the veil out of Bo’s hands. It whips back around quick enough that Bo has to move away from its tail and wingtips as they slash through the air. It scampers up Zuko’s scalp and lays the fabric over both of the Prince’s eyes, arranging it with every available appendage with incredible care.

As it growls with the chittering sound of grinding rock and lays itself bodily over the top of the veil, the Prince’s posture changes, relaxes, and then hunches over.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” Bo says, and risks it as he reaches forward to tie the fabric securely as a blindfold before it slips off. “Your uncle wants you back on deck. Do you need a minute?”

The Prince’s shivering picks up, now that he seems to be more… connected to his body? Less distant? Actually present? Hard to tell. Whatever he was, he’s back to the base-level of weirdness he usually is.

“Sorry,” he rasps out. “Give me… give me a little bit.” He winces, and the nape of his neck starts glowing that purple-blue combo. “Tui and La are… not exactly thrilled that I’m waiting around.” He makes a vague gesture toward the blindfold. “This should… stop that from becoming too much of an issue.” He reaches up and pats Beauh’s head absentmindedly. “Good thinking.”

Ah, there’s that familiar feeling that, before he joined the Siren, he never thought he’d ever experience: the sudden urge to physically fight a god or two.

“Take all the time you need,” Bo says, and aborts an awkward pat to the back upon remembering the whole ‘glowing spine, no touchy-touchy’ thing. He hasn’t technically acted as an older brother for a good few years now, but old habits die hard, he guesses. He leans back a little bit to send a ‘so-so’ hand gesture down to the Dragon of the West, where he waits with disturbing stillness on the deck. The General only sips his tea in response.

The Prince takes in a few deep breaths and rolls his shoulderblades out. He opens his mouth, freezes, and then curls over with a sneeze. Before Bo can do anything more than scoot an inch away, he sneezes again. “Ugh,” the Prince groans. In a moment, all of the water dripping from his coat and hair evaporates into steam, floating out on the dawn air. He keeps shivering, though, and lets out another sneeze. That one comes out with a lick of fire. 

Huh. Bo doesn’t actually know if he’s seen the Prince sick before. If that is what this is. He thought either more or less things would be on fire. Beauh nips at the top edge of the blindfold once before winding down and leaping over to clamber onto Bo’s pauldrons.

The Prince sniffles. “I can already tell today is going to be fun,” he mutters, rubbing at his nose with one sleeve and adjusting his blindfold with the other.

Bo taps out a quick rhythm against the mast and winces when Beauh’s only slightly rain-softened claws skritch at the place where his undershirt ends while it winds around his neck. “Eh, I’m sure it won’t be that bad.”

Even through the blindfold, the Prince can give a withering glare to rival his uncle’s. “Never say that, crewman. You underestimate how cursed I can get.” He sways like he’s about to shift over the edge of the mast, then grabs on tight and shifts back to stability like he’s thought better of it. “Help me down before Uncle starts stress-brewing.”

-

Sokka doesn’t think about it before he does it. If he did, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t do what he’s doing now, and he doesn’t like what that would say about who he is as a person.

Sokka blocks Jet’s sword with one fan, while the boomerang in his other hits his wrist. The hooked blade clatters to the ground.

The old man behind Sokka flinches and scrambles back as much as he can.

Sokka swallows down the immediate rush of  _ ‘what am I doing what am I doing why am I doing this’ _ and instead relies on the pulse beat of instinct raging in the back of his head.

“Sokka,” Jet snarls, adjusting his grip on his remaining sword and only taking a half-step back. “He’s Nation.” Behind him, Smellerbee flips her grip on her knives and Pipsqueak cracks his knuckles.

“Yeah, I got that loud and clear,” Sokka snaps out, stamping on the hilt of the sword on the floor and sliding it a fraction behind him. “He’s also, like, eighty years old, and you all have about a dozen blades between all of you.” He glances down briefly. “Well, eleven, actually. But who’s counting? It sure isn’t the guy who’s probably half-blind and cowering for his life right behind me.”

“He’s Nation,” Jet repeats, like Sokka’s dumb or something. “His people burned my village. They hurt your family. They hurt all of us.”

Smellerbee and Pipsqueak shift where they stand, not quite ready to run or fight but prepared to choose one of those options.

Sokka bares his own teeth in return, no matter what conflicting emotions he feels about this particular hill he’s chosen to die on. “And I’m Tribe. My people have done our fair share of drownings, but I don’t see you complaining. We respect our elders. We fight for those that can’t. I’m not moving on this, and if you try and make me, it will not be pretty.”  _ I will not be like them, _ he promises himself grimly.  _ I will not hurt for the sake of pain and kill for the sake of satisfaction. _

Jet’s eyes move quickly between every person and every blade present, shifting his grip on his only remaining sword before relaxing slightly. “Fine. Have it your way. We’ll take the contraband, but we’ll let him leave. Deal?”

Sokka narrows his eyes but flicks his fan closed and kicks the sword back over to Jet. “Deal.”

Sokka does not feel great about robbing an old man. He feels slightly less bad that the old man is Fire Nation. He definitely feels more positively about this option than a looted corpse left behind on the forest floor.

He’s had to make a lot more uncomfortable compromises from a multitude of incredibly bad scenarios since he’s left his village behind. If he’s being honest with himself, this is the least nauseating of the ones he’s made so far.

Sokka turns around carefully, keeping his fan at the ready to guard his back. “Go,” he orders the old man. “You get to keep your life. Don’t tell anyone about us.”

The old man nods mutely and presses up to his feet, hobbling as fast as he can further down the path. He leaves his bags behind in the dirt.

Jet watches the old man go with narrowed eyes and a twitch in his wrist with every stumbling movement. Only once he’s disappeared from sight does Jet pick up his hooked sword and shoulder past Sokka to pick up the old man’s pack.

“Your sister said you wouldn’t interfere,” Jet says, anger cold and simmering.

Sokka shrugs. “And you said we’d keep our hands clean, but you’re the one that took me along to kill a senior citizen. You broke terms first. I’ll call it even if you do.”

Jet flips his sword through the air once and catches it by the hilt. “Fine.” He slings the bag over his shoulder. “Honestly,” he starts slowly, consideringly, “if you care so much about the Nation, why don’t you go see exactly what you’re protecting?” He points his sword the way the old man went, and smirks like it’s another weapon for him to wield. “Gaipan is right there. You’re so determined to keep ashmaker blood alive, but you don’t even know what it’s done to the Kingdom.”

Sokka snaps the fan closed and stuffs it right next to its twin. “Yeah, sure. Why not. Might as well. So far all the information I’ve learned about anything happening here is that you’re perfectly ready to kill anyone you don’t like. Might as well get the other side. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be damn similar to every single one of my past experiences, but I’m open to learn about whatever new level of heinousness exists here that didn’t back where they killed half of my elders.” He turns on his heel and makes his way down the same path the old man took.

Jet snorts behind him. “All you’ll find is a town who bent the knee to mass-murderers,” He spits. “That’s all the other side is. They’re monsters. They chew people up and they spit them out, and they take everything they want from the people who need it. All they do is destroy, and kill, and steal, and they corrupt everything they touch into the same singed filth as them.”

Sokka twirls his boomerang around one finger and keeps walking, ears pricked for any cheap shots. “Do me a favor and check to make sure you aren’t looking in a mirror before you start talking about other sides,” he says. He pauses. 

He really doesn’t want to irritate them irreparably while they’re squatting in their forest, but he is so far from trusting them that he might honestly rather deal with the mad Spirit chasing them than this guy.

He wheels back around. “Actually, if you have any shopping you can’t do because you’re dangerous vigilantes, let me know. I’m pretty sure I can stomach that much.”

Smellerbee snorts.

Jet stabs one sword into the ground. “Might as well. I thought you were as much a child of this war as me, but if you’re too soft to protect us, that’s your best option.”

Sokka bares his teeth in something almost similar to a smile. “Yeah, it really is, isn’t it? You’re right, though. I am a child of this war, just the same as you. You’re fighting it every day, you’re building up your own battlefield on your terms, and I can respect that.” He opens his palms out, like he’s seen Aang do sometimes, like he’s seen Katara do in her most desperate moments. “I’m fighting my own part of it too, I’m just fighting to make sure I never need to fight again.”

Jet steps forward, bristles-

And then shifts backward, something close to realization edging onto his face before his shoulders relax and he goes back to that smirk of his.

“Huh. Maybe I’ll try out your way sometime,” he says. He pulls his blade out of the leaf litter with a single tug and slings it over his shoulder. “The Duke knows what we need best. Head back to camp, ask him, tell your sister where you’re going so she doesn’t try to kill me. Have fun, don’t get murdered.”

It’s probably a bad choice to walk into a Nation-occupied town just to spite some smarmy asshole with a penchant for manslaughter, but it sure is a choice, and Sokka sure is making it. 

He’s always been more curious than he should be.

-

Iroh sighs as Zuko comes down, half-shivering and sneezing periodically.

He sighs even heavier when Zuko says, “I’m going with you.”

-

Jet comes back to the base after Sokka has left.

“Hey,” he says. “Sorry about the whole thing with your brother. Honest mistake. Found a knife in the guy’s pack, though, so there’s a high chance he was sent to kill us.”

Katara doesn’t trust him. She doesn’t necessarily distrust him either. She can respect someone that picks their home, stands their ground, and fights for it. “Fair enough,” she says pleasantly.

Beside her, Aang’s vocabulary fails him and the stream of water he’s been carefully bending into the symbol on that Nomad corpse’s necklace falls to the boards. He doesn’t say anything to either of them, but he inches slightly closer to Katara as he coaxes it free of the wood again.

Jet tilts his head. “So, you’re both benders?”

Katara nods, doing her best to keep herself in his sights instead of Aang. “I’m heading North to learn what I couldn’t elsewhere. I found him while I was fishing, and I’m teaching him what I can.” It’s not a lie, per say, but it is a distortion. Luckily, that is where water best functions.

Jet hums. “So, if we needed a reservoir to keep those ashmakers from smoking us out, would you two be able to help?”

Katara turns half an eye to Aang.

His hands soothe and curl the water into the first spiraling shape. He nods, once, as he starts in on the next section. He’s better at fine control and equivocation than Katara, but she is better at flowing with the water.

Katara folds her hands behind her back like she’s seen Gran-Gran do. “I’m sure we can do something about that.”

After all, it’s just something to protect his home. It’s no different than the walls around the Tribe or the ravine around Omashu. It’ll keep this forest from burning down like the last. It will give them something to practice with while Appa gets the rest of his strength back. It’s protecting something. That’s been her job since she took the mantle of Chieftess onto her shoulders.

She’s sure it will be fine.

-

Zuko is wearing what Iroh would generously call a disguise. As a spymaster with a penchant for hiding in plain sight, Iroh would give it a zero out of five, but that translates to a wild improvement when it comes to his nephew being even remotely subtle. And somehow, how utterly overstated it is has given it an irritating level of effectiveness.

Zuko’s eyes are bothering him, today, so his veil covers over the entire upper half of his face. It reminds Iroh eerily of those horrible days after the Agni Kai, but he pushes down that instinctive terror and reminds himself of the embroidery spanning over the piece to keep the images of bandages from his mind.

Zuko’s eyes can get irritated and oversensitive, sometimes, what with the massive burn scar and all other associated damage. It’s not abnormal. Ensign Bo did inform Iroh of today’s episode, however, with the addition of a blunt “I’d physically fight the ocean today if I thought that wouldn’t make it worse.” So. It’s entirely possible this particular occurrence is more supernaturally motivated than is standard.

Now, a year ago, just the brightly embroidered fabric would have been an incredibly counterproductive disguise. It’s flashy, more so than even a bare scar. That was before the bard, now of the White Lotus, had spread the image and the power behind it far and wide.

Many people are left blind or mutilated by this war, many people wish to hide this from polite company to ensure they aren’t chased out of town by unsettled civilians, and many people look to this fresh myth of the blind Bandit Prince to empower themselves. And where a sizable section of the population sees hope, enterprising merchants see a chance to make some good coin. Knockoffs of Zuko’s veil, or fabric with similar prints to be used as sashes and such, have been sold at every single port Iroh has perused over the past year or two. Zuko will, honestly, be more anonymous wearing this than any other scrap of fabric.

Other than that, he’s abandoned his usual coat for something flimsier, longer, and an eye-searing shade of green from Iroh’s collection of costumes. It covers up the Agni Kai ring, at least, and has extra padding on the spine that hides the lightshow happening within the handprint scar on his back. The hood of it helps hide the crawling veins of multicolored light streaking up his neck and from under his blindfold. It also really helps enforce the notion that his nephew is entirely blind, because Iroh bought that robe when he was drunk and just looking at it makes him want to head straight into the nearest tavern.

It is, all in all, a horrible but horribly effective disguise. Iroh despises it almost as much as he loves his nephew. 

Everyone stares as they walk through the market, but no one looks twice. All they see is an unfortunate, sniffling blind boy wearing the symbol of the one who claws his way through the colonies, setting things to rights, being shepherded by an old man with loose Kingdom styled hair and sap styling his beard into something just to the left of the Dragon of the West’s.

(All there is is the one who tears his teeth through tyrants, wearing his own mask as a disguise and denying the fury of gods, hand clamped on the arm of a man that has been coated in more blood than exists in a hundred men so the Bandit Prince does not leap out of his skin and hunt.)

Aren’t they just adorable.

“Zuko,” Iroh whispers quietly, turning his head one more time to nod obligingly at the local seller that gave him a discount for ‘being so allowing’ with his nephew, “do you need to leave?”

Zuko shakes his head almost imperceptibly and sneezes again. “It’s not as bad with the moon down and me off of the sea.”

_ It’s bad, alright, _ Iroh translates,  _ but I can control myself now, and if I take a single step back to the shore I might just drown. If I give in for a second, I will not stop. If I let the Wyrm spread its wings, it will take its anger and eat the forest whole. _

Honestly, Iroh wishes his nephew still had the rage he’s admitted he’s lost. Iroh knows rage. He knows hatred. He grew up with it writhing in his skin and standing beside him, calling him brother. He does not know the bleakness, the grim duty, the pain, the quiet that is his nephew now, after the Agni Kai. He might know the vigilant, spitting fury of the scaled thing under his nephew’s skin that has taken all of the scraps of his nephew’s anger and made them into teeth and claws, but he can’t understand it. He does not know the dichotomy of his angerless and infinitely raging kin. It frightens him in the way few things do, nowadays.

He does not know where the dragon ends and his nephew begins and where they blend into one another like poured paint, but he knows there is a division. He knows that, more than the scars branding his nephew, more than the Agni Kai ring merciless in its reminder, more than the sunlight searing his eyes or the Spirits yelling demands in his ears, it is that aching disparity between his own self that hurts Zuko the most.

He does not know where the differences are split, no, but he sees it when both fractured pieces of his nephew straighten their spines and turn their heads. When Zuko’s stance changes from something carefully controlled and stiff to something fluid, mobile, and predatory.

Iroh nearly drops his purchases in his haste to clamp a hand around Zuko’s wrist before he pulls it away. He’s not naive enough to assume he can control his nephew, but he has hopes that he can at least give him enough hesitation to reconsider whatever impulse is twisting through his head.

“Uncle,” Zuko whispers in a tone that sounds closer to a growl than Iroh is comfortable with, “three stalls down. Who?”

Iroh pats his nephew’s hand good naturedly and slowly, ever so slowly, deep in the guise of a far-too-old man to hide his far-too-sharp eyes, he turns to look.

Well. If Zuko’s disguise was highly creative and remarkably effective, this is the direct opposite. It’s a shade of blue too precise to be imitation, too well-hated to be flattery, and too simple to do anything other than draw attention to the person wearing it.

Iroh led a campaign throughout the Kingdom, not any sort of drawn out naval confrontation on Tribal waters, but he has met Pakku face to face a few times and scoured all of the scrolls he could find on the nations of the other elements. He knows Water Tribe when he sees it, and this boy is it.

There’s also a pair of golden fans at the boy’s belt, quite similar to the ones their newly scarred crewmember had admitted falling victim to, which really can’t be interpreted any way other than the obvious.

One of the Avatar’s companions is right here, a mere few dozen steps away. Iroh can breathe fire that far. Zuko can bend fire that far with the barest twitch.

The boy is buying bandages. He is smiling at the merchant. He has his hair loose, as though that will hide the way it is obviously meant to be put up into a wolf’s tail. He is courteous. He is painfully obvious.

Iroh almost wishes the boy was raging, was being inconsiderate and spiteful, was sneaking around and threatening the safety of this place. It would be so easy, then, to release his gentle grip on his nephew’s wrist and encourage him to give the Avatar the signal to fly painted in screams and sate the things that claw blue and purple lines up his neck.

But the boy is kind, and he searches out methods of healing rather than the tools of war, so Iroh will do his best to let him leave here unharmed.

“The Water Tribe boy,” Iroh answers. “He’s buying bandages. He’s smiling with the vendor.” Iroh keeps the grip on Zuko’s wrist. “Do you need to leave?” he asks again, with a thousand different meanings put behind any of the answers Zuko can choose.

Zuko stands, tense, poised at the edge of a precipice. He could say yes and leave out toward the plains to avoid the forest entirely. He could say yes and take the boy before them as bait. He could say yes and run back to the ship, where he feels safe even if the sound of the sea would be unbearable. He could say yes and just go straight into the forest to do whatever the Spirits deem the proper revenge on an Avatar missing one of his protectors.

He could.

He doesn’t.

He shakes with another sneeze, he tightens his grip on Iroh’s sleeve, and says, “no.” He tilts his head a little. “Not yet, at least.”

Iroh smiles at another vendor as he pulls his nephew off to the side. “Oh?”

“If one of the Avatar’s guards are here,” Zuko starts, sniffling , “then we can’t exclude the possibility that the Avatar might come here, for as long as he remains in the area.”

Iroh nods, hearing the million implications in that sentence, and the low dread in Zuko’s voice.

“Where the Avatar goes,” Iroh quotes, “chaos follows.” He pats Zuko’s hand once and finally releases his hold on his wrist. “You mean to be a shepherd and a shield both, nephew. I don’t know if you’ll succeed.”

Zuko shrugs and winces as the subtle light under his green hood intensifies in its wild shifting. “I evaded the first time, and people almost died. I challenged the second time, and I almost killed people.” He hisses slightly under his breath. “Maybe if I go into this just trying to protect, this won’t end with people almost losing their lives.”

Iroh hums. “Maybe.”

He counts out a few measured breaths. Zuko matches on instinct.

Well, the good news is that Iroh came with enough money to fund both his current purchases and an inn room for at least the night.

He’ll just have to find some way to get a message back to the crew before they come blazing in with all of the lack of subtlety that has made the  _ Siren _ such a well-renowned vessel in search of their missing royals.

Everything that involves his nephew gets complicated and strange very quickly. Iroh wouldn’t have it any other way.

-

Gaipan is… weirdly nice. They’re a merchant town. The soldiers stand side by side with people in Kingdom colors, laughing and joking and trading barbs. The merchants aren’t afraid to smile. If it weren’t for the red dotting the earthbent streets and the Nation colors flying from every Kingdom-style roof, Sokka would think the war had never come here.

There’s no resources for the Nation to exploit. There’s no reason for any merchant to go running to the Kingdom for help when the Nation controls the waters and trade in the area. There’s no reason to subjugate further, and there’s no reason to resist. Somehow, in the middle of this fucking war, there is an odd, stilted peace.

Sokka knows about the cruelty this peace is built upon. Even knowing that much, knowing that his mother’s blood was spilt while this place was forged, that it’s built on bone and gristle and bloody money flowing in through the roads, he can’t help but envy it.

Sokka turns away from the vendor, mentally marking nails off of the list The Duke gave him. He also mentally curses his bangs for falling directly into his face.

He pushes up his fringe, blowing out a breath and wishing he could just pull it back into its traditional style without blowing his cover.

He pauses.

Directly down the street, stone-still and staring, there is a figure wrapped in an almost impossibly green robe, hood casting shadows over their face. Sokka would swear he sees glimmers of light in the shade, frenzied and pulsing.

The figure tilts its head, and Sokka loses his hold on his hair as his blood freezes. It falls back into his face, temporarily cutting off his line of sight from-

_ Green. Blue. Red. Orange. _

_ Vines. Streams. Blood. Sunbeams. _

Sokka sweeps his hair back, but it’s too late. The figure is gone.

Sokka’s hands shake as he rushes through the last of the purchases. His hands shake as he sneaks back into the forest.

He tries to tell himself it’s just him jumping at shadows, leaping to conclusions, pouncing on fears.

He tries. He doesn’t know if he succeeds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Iroh seeing Sokka:  
[](https://postimg.cc/FfyGvsy3)
> 
> Zuko got the snifflies because god wouldn't stop yelling at him to go kill a middle-schooler while it was raining. He lives a fascinating but deeply unfortunate life. Iroh is watching his trainwreck of a nephew and giving an enthusiastic thumbs up.
> 
> Aang, meanwhile, is Not Enjoying his time with the cool kids, since they're more murdery than he likes. Waterbending practice is pretty fun tho. Sokka is just doing best to not have a lot of people dead near him in general. Katara is doing her best to keep everything chill and protected and not on fire. Jet is thinking about war crimes Vividly.
> 
> There are 50+ people on the [discord server](https://discord.gg/z4g2dAK) now, and lemme just say: all of you rock. It's been so nice to have such a supportive environment to exist in, and it's been so nice to see people share ideas and creations. Y'all are lovely.
> 
> Someone on tumblr requested an [Air Nomad folk song](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/631186291152846848/this-was-another-song-request-it-hurt-so-well-to), so you better bet I leaned so very hard into cruel irony. Enjoy your pain. It's also on the [youtube playlist](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVijaFdLcG1yFqbRDpNDoy0INiUbWfJ6J), if that's more your speed.
> 
> There's been some discord server art!  
recurring artist [blaiddthewolf](https://blaiddthewolf.tumblr.com/), aka blaidd, made this [beautiful sketch](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/761743778146680852/image0.jpg?width=225&height=300) of Agni dabbing. Don't question it.  
[gokupowers](https://gokupowers.tumblr.com/), aka angel <3, also shared the [wip](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/761273176469798992/received_815576032518228.jpeg?width=400&height=300) [shots](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/761273176948473856/received_330848428066391.jpeg?width=400&height=300) of their utterly fantastic Zuko.
> 
> Again, I cannot thank you all enough for sticking around, joining in, reading this, and interacting with me to keep this magic alive. This series just passed over 150k in total, and I owe it to you guys for giving me enough positivity and interest to keep me creating. Thank you all so much.


	27. Chapter 27

Sokka comes back with a sack full of everything on the verbal list The Duke gave him. He also comes back with that subtle set of his shoulders that means  _ prey _ rather than  _ predator. _

Katara’s legs ache in the good way they always do when she speaks to the water a little more than she should’ve. That does nothing to slow her as she rises up from the ground and wraps her arms around Sokka before he can put anything down. Her fingertips drum the same beat Sokka gave her to bend to all those days ago at the river over his back.

“Are you okay?” she whispers, covering it up by pulling back slightly and digging her hands through the small cluster of nails by the top of the sack as though she’s examining them. She barely even knows how they work. It’s not like snow and ice need metal spikes to hold it together.

“Mostly,” Sokka says, equally as quiet. “The quicker we leave, the better. I saw someone that looked a hell of a lot like the Bandit Prince. I think. Maybe. It might be a sign.”

Jet makes a derisive noise - he’s closer than she expected he’d be, suddenly. He takes the sack from Sokka and tosses him a couple of coins in return. “The Bandit Prince? Please, like he’d bother with a place like this.”

Aang’s head doesn’t snap up - he’s too subtle for that, most of the time - but Katara can see the second he registers the name and takes very keen notice.

Katara also can’t help but notice that there’s a falseness to the confidence in Jet’s voice when he says his words. Nor can she help but notice the way his hand keeps drifting toward his swords and that his right foot keeps making aborted little twitches like it wants to tap against the boards.

He’s nervous.

He’s  _ lying. _

It’s not surprising, necessarily, but it is disappointing.

“I’m not too worried,” she lies right back to Jet’s face, just to see if he notices. Just to see what he’ll do. Just to see if he’s the watchful protector she thought he was. “We’ll probably be able to leave by tomorrow morning, after we finish filling up the reservoir. Even if he had a reason to come here-” she tracks the way Jet’s eyes narrow slightly and has to stop herself from smiling and sighing simultaneously from that unsatisfying victory- “we’ll be long gone before he shows up.”

_ Come on, _ she says silently, in the spaces between her words,  _ prove me wrong. Give us a reason why we should stay. Tell us what you aren’t saying. Tell us what you’re protecting, and what you’ve done to protect it. Tell us why we should risk this. _

Jet tilts his chin up. He doesn’t smirk this time. “Fine,” he says.

The aching buzz of worry unfurls at the base of her neck again.

“Fine,” Katara says back. She taps Sokka’s wrist again, in the rolling, thrumming pattern of the sea in a storm.

_ We are not out of this yet, _ she says in that rhythm.  _ These waters are not calm and the clouds that threaten us are not gone. We are not safe. _

She can only hope that Sokka gets the message, as she drags him next to Aang. She can only hope, and ignore the clawed fear dragging around her neck.

-

Bo shoos the messenger bird off of the rigging once he’s done skimming the note attached to its claws. Is he supposed to read all of the mail? No. Can anyone tell him not to? Yes. Will he listen? Absolutely not. He prides himself on knowing at least the basics of everything that is happening on this boat. He’s almost better at connecting red strings than he is at tying knots.

Besides, it’s good to know whether or not he should keep the bird around to return a reply message, and given the way Beauh is chittering at it and twitching on Bo’s shoulder, the bird’s safety would be in jeopardy if he waited for too long. It looks very happy to be leaving, even if Beauh’s retaliatory nip at his ear is less than pleasant.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bo grumbles, slinging himself down through the ropes and being extra mindful of all of the extra spikes currently sitting on his shoulder. “I’ll see if I can find you a hedge-pigeon or something.” He tilts his head. “Wait, you’re literally dirt. You don’t even need to eat. Why do you- no. Not questioning it. Stop questioning things. Just- go with it.” He lands on the deck and sighs. “I am talking entirely to myself, aren’t I?”

“Not entirely,” comes an amused voice from behind him.

Bo straightens up and dusts himself off as much as possible so he doesn’t look horrible before turning around and tossing out a salute. “Just the superior officer I was looking for!” he says, only wincing slightly when Beauh nips at his ear for the rough dismount.

Captain Jee raises an eyebrow.

Bo holds out the message, bouncing a little on his toes. “The royals spotted one of the Avatar’s companions in the market,” he says. “They won’t be coming back to the ship tonight so the Prince doesn’t lose his mind again. They just wanted to check in to make sure we weren’t going to storm in immediately.”

Captain Jee takes the note but only gives it a cursory glance to make sure Bo is being accurate. Bo might be one of the youngest crew members, but he’s kept a sterling reputation for accurate information. It also doesn’t not help that he has a magic dragon hanging onto his shoulder sometimes. Deal with enough Spirit nonsense, and you start giving more leeway to the ones that have visible favor. Those poor bastards have enough to deal with already.

Bo is one of those poor bastards. So is… pretty much everybody here. Bo is just one of the poor bastards that immediately started actively chasing after and interacting with the local Spirit. He gets extra brownie points for being dumb enough to do that and let everyone else profit from knowing half of the bullshit he’s put the work in to learn.

“Acknowledged,” Jee replies. “Get down to the mess hall and eat something.”

Bo does another salute while he bounces to his toes again. “Yessir.”

Again, Bo is a crewman on the younger side of things. Jee has a complex when it comes to protecting anyone he judges too young to be involved in this war. Bo is somewhat used to being pressed into lunch or a quick nap. Unlike the Prince, he’s liable to actually listen to Jee’s tired advice on taking care of himself.

Beauh digs its claws in Bo’s collar and scrabbles its legs against the metal of Bo’s pauldrons in an effort to more securely throw itself around Bo’s shoulder. It makes a displeased noise when it can’t manage.

Bo pats it on the head as he swings around the doorframe toward the mess hall.

He passes by Rival Bo right outside the door leading down to the armory. Beauh, the spiny little traitor, immediately wiggles and pounces its way off of Bo’s precarious shoulder perch and onto Liu Bo’s.

Yeah, Bo is getting a headache just trying to keep track of this situation too.

Liu Bo, who has steadily grown more unhinged and outspoken ever since it has fully sunken in where she had thrown her lot in, raises a gloved hand to scratch under the bloodstain worked over the dragon’s left eye. She inclines her head slightly in Bo’s direction. “Any news?”

Now, there is a part of Bo that badly wants to snark at her, mostly for having the nerve to have his name too. There is also another part of him that really desperately wants to not be chased out of here by a highly competent, battle-scarred firebender with a dragon clinging to her.

(Look, honestly, he’s had it good for too long, and he knows this. At least he shares his name with the scariest person on this boat aside from the Dragon of the West and a literal dragon. His parents almost named him Li, and that would have been a travesty and a half literally anywhere he went. One out of every eight people Bo has ever met is named Li.)

Bo compromises. “I mean, it depends? I sort of know something about everything happening everywhere related to the  _ Siren. _ You’ll have to be more specific.”

Beauh does that chittering, grinding laugh sound that sounds a little too close to the noises it made toward the messenger bird for comfort.

Liu Bo pauses and appraises him. “Huh. I can respect that.” She does one of those loose rolls of her shoulders that firebenders seem to enjoy. “If you come by this little shit’s nest later-” she skritches behind one of Beauh’s many, many spines- “you can bitch about it. I killed the last bastard that tried to hide his dirty laundry from me. It’d be nice to know who I should keep an eye on.”

Agni, that is terrifying. Somehow, Bo is less scared than he was at the start of the conversation, though. He’s awfully counterproductive like that sometimes. Put him with an unknown but perfectly nice individual? He’ll tear his hair out and run away as quickly as possible. Put him with a solvable mystery, some clues, and some light homicidal urges? Yeah, he’ll feel right at home. It’s hard to tell if this is part of the  _ Siren _ or not, or just something that Bo is slowly discovering about himself. Maybe both. He’ll throw himself headlong into danger just to make sure he doesn’t let an opportunity to gossip pass him by.

If nothing else, Liu Bo is getting much more in sync with the general light air of sedition that haunts the corridors. She’s openly admitting to murder now! Progress! Maybe! Honestly, he’s just excited to have someone that actually wants to hear about his little information network and he’s willing to wait in an isolated room containing multiple weapons with an admitted murderer just so he can talk about it.

Besides, it's not like he’s unarmed. He’s just probably not armed enough.

“That sounds fantastic,” Bo says, and means it even if he logically shouldn’t. “I need to eat something so the Captain doesn’t throw a bowl of rice at my head later, but I’ll be right down.” He casts a speculative glance at the clay dragon that has its head propped up on the top of Liu Bo’s and its tongue sticking slightly out of its mouth. “I’d bring a tribute or something, but I’m honestly worried that Beauh is going to wind up with more stuff than the Dragon of the West.”

Liu Bo shrugs, giving Beauh that extra leg up to leap on top of her head entirely and wrap itself around her topknot like a particularly elaborate and heavy ornament. “We’ll live. Unless we all die, in which case, it’s not like it mattered in the first place.”

Bo laughs, a harsh bark that comes out of his throat before he even realizes it happening. “Oh, we’re going to get along great.”

Unless she tries to fight him for naming rights. In which case, he will go for the throat.

-

Sokka gets up when the moon is high and his blood is buzzing. He is sleepless, he is restless, and he paces his way to the stores silently. It’s not an unfamiliar habit. He had run the village side by side with Katara for a while, and it’s almost second nature to check on how long he has until he has to start rationing and hunting under the snowfall.

Katara and Aang are sleeping on Appa, tonight, in preparation to leave early the next day. Sokka trusts Appa to protect them while he’s gone.

He can’t stop thinking about the figure in the marketplace, about the figure at the top of the hill, about the figure wreathed in flames burning down Kyoshi Island. About the ghost or man or Spirit or child burning ashen prints in the wake of his own and infinitely chasing the one so used to being the one on the hunt. About the blind boy, about the second sun, about the vengeful dragon wreathed in fire and pain and wearing the colors of all four elements over its colonizer gold eyes.

He moves because he cannot sleep and if he keeps moving maybe that creature won’t catch up to him.

He moves silently through the barrels and crates, tallying them, counting up resources, counting up the time left.

He pauses.

The food stores are fine - stuffed full, in fact. The Freedom Fighters are far from the brink of starvation, and Sokka can’t find enough will in him to be jealous about that.

No, it’s not the food stores. It’s the barrels of blasting jelly that were there last night when Sokka did this same tired routine. It’s the fact that they are, with one or two exceptions, entirely missing, with rings of dust where some of the further back barrels should be.

That…

That doesn’t seem right.

Why were they moved?

_ Think, Sokka. _

Would they just throw them out? No, not when they put so much effort into carrying them up into their fortress in the trees. 

Would they sell them? Unlikely, since they can’t interact with the average old man without trying to kill him first. They hadn’t mentioned any allied rebel groups that they would sell to, and it would be a cheery day in Koh’s Lair before they sold to the Fire Nation.

Would they move them to another section of their base? That’s not likely either, since they put all the effort into moving them here. It would be more plausible if they seemed to have a separate area for their inedible, dangerous supplies, but they have their crate of apples right next to their baskets of poisonous plants, their bag of potatoes slung halfway over their barrel of tar, and their sack of nuts slumped against their bottles of lamp oil. Safety is not a concern for them, and neither is organization.

And now to the question that Sokka dreads to ask: would they use them?

…

Yes. Yes they would. They would absolutely use them.

Now, of course, the question is where and whether or not Sokka should be trying to stop them.

Now, it was clear that first restless night pacing by their stores that they’d been accumulating blasting jelly for a long time. It’s possible that they’ve just reached the end of their rope now, or they’ve finally acquired enough to do whatever it is they were always aiming for.

There was dust on some of the old barrels, though. They hadn’t been touched or accounted for in a long time. If this was a plan in the works that was finally coming to fruition, then they hadn’t been very careful in keeping track of all of their crucial supplies.

(Why so many? Why were they unmoved until now? Why now?)

Of course, they could use it in the forest to fell trees or set up traps or spook out prey but-

But their food stores are well stocked, their home is well-made and not in need of repairs, and they had dusty old barrels waiting around. If they were setting traps, then they wouldn’t have waited until now to touch any of the stuff they’d use to set them off and do their damage, if they were gathering lumber they wouldn’t need to do it in such a massive quantity, and if they were spooking out prey, it would be incredibly overkill, especially considering how much food they have alrea-

But.

But.

Prey is not always flesh and bones, is not always animals caught in snares. Sometimes, as Sokka is becoming uncomfortably aware of, prey is of the more human variety.

(Why so many? Why were they unmoved until now? Why now?)

Sokka’s first thought is the barracks in Gaipan. It was one of the nicer buildings in the area, from the distant glance he saw in the market. It would hamstring the military efforts in the valley, for at least a little bit, if it was destroyed. It’s also exceptionally well guarded. It would be hard to sneak that much blasting jelly in. It would be strategic but unlikely. Sokka keeps it in the back of his mind.

Sokka’s second thought, which he’s not overly proud of, would be to detonate them in the marketplace. It probably wouldn’t kill many Fire Nation soldiers, but it could sow distrust. It would also bring the Fire Nation down on the town, though, and the surrounding forest. Besides the loss of (somewhat) innocent life, it wouldn’t do much for the military occupation of the valley and would probably only be counterproductive. Still, Sokka slips that idea somewhere in the back of his mind.

He mulls both of those plans over, tries to come up with something that would meaningfully bring any change or force out the Fire Nation.

(Why so many? Why were they unmoved until now? Why now?)

Even as he thinks on those two previous plans, they fall apart. Three or four barrels, placed strategically enough, could accomplish either of the plans. The more they had to move into the area to make their point, the higher chance of getting caught, and the more resources they’d abandon in case soldiers weren’t in the barracks or if the townsfolk fought back in retaliation. Why move all of them? It’s almost like-

It’s almost like they’re trying to break through solid stone. It’s almost like they expect to have no resistance after they’ve accomplished whatever it is they’re planning.

It’s almost like something has changed in the past day or two to make this possible.

Footsteps echo on the planks far behind him, and Sokka ducks behind one of the barrels of almost certainly stolen supplies, keeping his breathing steady and his eyes trained on the door.

Smellerbee and Pipsqueak walk in, side by side. Smellerbee grabs a handful of shelled nuts from a sack while Pipsqueak lumbers forward to pick up the last two barrels with a sloppy motion.

“Careful,” Smellerbee chides. “Don’t break any of them. We need all of it if we’re going to crack that reservoir open. Jet won’t be happy if we have to wait until we get more.”

Pipsqueak sighs. “I’ve been moving these all night for the big show tomorrow,” he grumbles. “Sue me, I just want to get some sleep.”

Smellerbee sighs and tosses a few nuts into the air, catching them easily and crunching down. “We all do, Pipsqueak. We’ll all sleep a lot easier when we don’t have ash clogging up our valley.” Smellerbee sighs and pulls out one of her blades. “We’ll sleep a lot easier when there isn’t a Nation Spirit wandering around, mucking things up.”

They leave, one skipping her way and flicking a knife over her knuckles, the other following while lugging barrels of blasting jelly away.

Sokka slumps back against the barrel he’s leaning against.

Oh, fuck.

_ Oh,  _ ** _fuck._ **

Katara and Aang have been working on that reservoir all day, and they’re planning on spending the next morning filling it up even more before they all leave. One waterbender on their own can pull a terrifying amount of water free of the sky. There has to be at least enough water in that to tear through wood like it’s nothing if it's set free.

Sokka knows the devastation water can wreak. He’s felt it a couple of times, before Katara got better control. He’s seen it crack icebergs, awaken things long dead. He’s seen it tell prophecies and drown less than careful predators.

Water is, at its core, nurture and torture. It kills as easily as it offers life.

Here, it will surely do the former.

The Freedom Fighters aren’t leaving behind any blasting jelly because they don’t want to risk not having enough. They aren’t leaving behind any blasting jelly because they don’t expect any resistance after they flood the whole valley and destroy the whole town. Because they don’t plan on leaving any survivors to retaliate, and they probably won’t have many if they’ve played their cards right and are waiting on the wings to finish off any remnants.

Fuck, it’s smart. Fuck, it’s horrifying.

And fuck if Sokka knows what he should be doing about it.

He is well aware of how horrifying it would be for him to stand by and let this happen. He’s well aware of how many people who never signed up to do the dirty, flame-scarred work of the Firelord’s throne will die.

He’s also well aware of how many people that have done or will do atrocities will die, too. He’s also painfully aware that it was just about as horrifying for these people to stand by, complacent, while the Nation occupied them and nearly emptied out Sokka’s village with ash-stained hands and palms smeared with blood-smothered gold.

It was easy when it was the old man. It was easy when it was one decrepit, innocent person with fear in his eyes looking at sharp steel. It was immediate, then, even if it was just as conflicting. He could either choose to move or choose to stand back right then and there, and he would see the full extent of the consequences in the same instant.

Immediacy made the full consequences of his own actions secondary. It is this dreaded, awful stretch of time between the danger and now that allows him to doubt.

It was different when it was one unarmed person against one with blades. It is difficult now when it is a raging flood against a town coated in red banners. Sokka was taught to treat his blades with respect, and take lives with them meaningfully. Sokka was taught to treat water with respect, because it is dangerous and powerful and uncontrolled and it will be his own fault if he is consumed by it.

He has been taught that water is blameless. He has been taught that people are not. The line is blurred, then, for Katara and for the Freedom Fighters, who are blameable people seeking to use a blameless weapon.

And the question remains if there even should be any blame and, if there is, if Sokka should shoulder any of it. If Sokka should try to stop this, or if he should stand by silently and watch everyone drown.

He tried to save a polar dog from the water, once, and he has a scar on his arm from when it lashed out. He tried to convince his father to stay behind and not go shed blood for blood, and he has the useless mantle of chieftan to prove his failure. If he tries to warn the town, there will be consequences. If he tries to stop the Freedom fighters, there will be consequences.

There’s no guarantee that trying to stop this would work and there’s a lot of past evidence that he could get hurt trying. It’s a shitty rationalization to let everyone die, yes, but-

But.

But it’s because of people like this, meek and submissive and cooperative, that Katara had to learn to control herself and the rush of her own blood piece by agonized, hard-earned piece. It’s because of people like those in Gaipan right now that Sokka stood alone in the village, with all of the men gone to fight on the shores of the place these citizens so easily gave up. It’s because of the red-wreathed soldiers and well-compensated merchants that the only mother Sokka or Katara had is sunk, burned and bloodied, at the bottom of the ocean and their father is out fighting.

Sokka has always been very good at picking the best option out of the bad ones. He’s always been good at picking what is right.

It says something, then, that Sokka has no idea what he should do here.

It feels a little like a sign. It feels a little like a test. It feels a little like neither.

Sokka waits for a while longer in the storeroom before he paces silently back to Appa. He worms his way around both of his traveling companions and tries his best to only think on the contact, on that there are warm, breathing lives relying on him that have been damned by the actions and inactions of everyone in that town.

He still thinks about the smiling merchants in the market. He still thinks about the soldiers only a little older than him, with uncertain grips on their weapons and a nervousness when they interacted with the elderly shoppers that gave them unsolicited advice. He still thinks about the kids, running through the streets, laughing madly and dragging stuffed animals by the fraying arms through the dirt as they played. He still thinks about that terrified old man staring down Jet’s swords. He still thinks about the figure staring at the marketplace.

He thinks.

He doesn’t really sleep.

-

Zuko gets through the night without glowing or snarling enough to wake up the neighbors or climbing out the window to go maliciously pursue the other teenagers who have incurred the wrath of the gods. Iroh gives him the slightly better cup in the morning as a reward. Iroh didn’t think to bring a proper teapot and he’s wary of leaving Zuko alone to ask for one, so they unfortunately have to suffer through the subpar brewing at this lackluster inn in the morning. At least their ceramics are nice.

The glaze pattern on Zuko’s cup, which he’s sure his nephew is too tired and too visually impaired to appreciate, reminds Iroh of the old kintsugi art he used to collect. He wonders if his brother has smashed the collection he left behind at the palace in a rage, again. He wonders if Zuko would want any of it if he can find any similar pieces, or if the message behind the vessels would be a little too on the nose for his nephew. Iroh’s own cup has a delightful little design that, in another life, he’s sure would’ve been an excellent depiction of a phoenix if one of its wings and its beak hadn’t run partway through the process.

Zuko still has on that horrible green robe. It doesn’t distract from the slight shakiness of his hands, though, or the faint red marks where the edges of his blindfold, tied tighter than normal, have bitten into his skin.

“What are your plans for today?” Iroh asks.

Zuko takes a sip of his tea. He sneezes. He rubs his fingers over the raised patterns on his cup. He looks a lot like he’d prefer to go to sleep. A thin branch of pale light creeps up over his collar.

Iroh lets the silence sit and brew. It will certainly come out tasting better than the stuff in his cup.

“I think I’ll sit in the market,” Zuko says, quietly, after a long while. “I… it’s not a good day today. If the Avatar comes to town and starts stirring up trouble, I need to be there to protect them.”

Iroh is familiar with Zuko’s bad days. The days where he switches between the fearful anger he still has and a despondent, terrible blankness at the drop of a hat. The days where he has to keep an eye or ear on his people or grow restless with the uncertainty of their safety. Usually he sits in the rafters in the mess hall on those days. Now, away from his trusted, familiar crew, it looks as though he’s searching out what little human connection he safely can. The dragon, away from his hoard, is doing his best to find something close enough to count.

Iroh is also familiar with bad days in general. The days where the entire world sits, tense, on the edge of a precipice, and only a few can sense it. The days where everything feels on the edge of a calamity or revelation. The days where silent prophecies meet reality and both fight tooth and nail to stay true.

Iroh gets the feeling Zuko means both. Iroh gets the feeling he should’ve saved more of his money so he could get a teapot and maybe some kind of alcohol.

“Alright,” Iroh says. He sips his tea. He runs his thumb over the melted phoenix emblazoned on the cup. He keeps his breath steady and resolutely doesn’t let any licks of flame past his lips.

Primor- no, there’s a few too many of them Iroh wants to have words with to invoke them all - Triple Spirits, let Zuko be wrong for once. 

_ Let him have one good day after these many weeks. _

-

Katara wakes up before Aang to find that Sokka hasn’t gone to sleep the whole time.

Before she can sigh and force him to at least take a nap, Sokka taps her wrist with that rolling pattern from last night, of sea in storm and danger ahead.

Katara freezes.

“Do you blame the people in that town for standing by when the ashmakers went after us?” Sokka asks, voice barely a whisper.

What a wonderful, loaded question to wake up to first thing in the morning. “I… I don’t- I don’t know Sokka.”

He sighs and leans back against Appa’s saddle, loose limbed. “If all of them, ashmakers and earthshakers alike, would die today if you didn’t do anything, would you try to stop it?”

It’s something about his tone. Something about the helpless curl of his shoulders. Something that tells Katara the wrongness in his words.

Katara closes her eyes. “This isn’t hypothetical, is it, Sokka?”

Sokka doesn’t say anything. That in itself is an answer. Katara gets it, now, why Sokka is talking so low and is so careful to keep Aang from waking up. This isn’t the kind of conversation that can happen with someone so newly introduced to the injustices of this war present. This isn’t the kind of thing they should force a young pacifist to hear.

(This isn’t something they should have to decide, either. Should is no promise, however. Should is an empty hope, and they are familiar with those.)

Katara takes in a breath. She wets her lips. She hesitates. Her silence stretches.

Sokka sighs, low and tired. Her quiet speaks everything she would need to say. She knows now why Sokka hasn’t slept. She’s not sure she would be able to, in his shoes.

Violence has been central to her education. It is not her people wandering the streets of that town. They stood by while the people she has sworn herself to protect dwindled and burned and sunk. She is well within her rights to stand by and do nothing, just as they did. She is well within her rights to take matters into her own hands.

An eye for an eye, blood for blood, ash to mud and dust to flood.

Her father left, though, to hunt for other eyes. To hunt for more blood. The world Katara, Sokka, and Aang are trying so hard to change is built on stolen eyes and rivers of crimson.

She has watched tragedy spill out in their wake a thousand times over. She has brought prosperity only once, and it wasn’t by standing by and doing nothing and it wasn’t by running away.

“When?” Katara asks. “How?”

“Probably once you’re done filling up the reservoir. The working theory is that they’re going to blow the whole thing with blasting jelly and flood the valley.” Sokka lifts a hand and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Just-” he makes a helpless little noise in the back of his throat. “Look, I know. I know I’m the leader with these sorts of things. I know I’m the one that- that makes all the plans and knows what to do. But I… I can’t trust myself to make this decision. I need you to make the call on this one.”

Well, here are her answers. Here is what Jet is willing to do to protect his land. Here is what Jet is willing to do for freedom.

It’s hard for her to fault him for that in any meaningful way. She can pity him, though, and that’s probably worse as far as he’s concerned. She can pity him for being willing to destroy everything and she can pity him for failing.

Because that is what she will do. She will try to make him fail. If she can’t, then she can’t, and there will be less ashmakers in the world than there are this morning. If she can, then she can, and whatever children and civilians that live in that village will live another day.

“We try,” Katara says, voice no louder than a whisper and only a shred more certain. “We should at least try.”

Sokka sighs. It’s hard to tell if it’s in relief or not. “Any ideas?”

Katara glances at Aang, still curled up around his staff. Still wearing the colors of a massacred people. “I’ll run interference as long as I can, and I’ll try to get Jet to back off. Aang has to go to the reservoir and empty out what he can.” It’ll be hard. Water pulled from the sky is always less cooperative than water that already knows the earth. Freezing and melting water is easy, getting it to return to the clouds is incredibly difficult. Aang is new at this. They all are. If it goes wrong, then it’ll be even more destructive mud careening down toward that wooden town.

Sokka nods. He stretches out his wrist. He taps on one of his fans. “I can tell him to go, but if you think I’m leaving you unguarded, you’re crazy.”

“Call me insane, then, because if I can’t convince Jet to stop,” Katara says, hating her uncertainty, hating her compassion, not quite used to being the one who has to make the plans, “then I need you to go into that town and warn everyone you can to get to higher ground. I might be able to stop some of it, but I doubt that will go uncontested. I can give you a minute after the water is loose, probably, if both Aang and I are there to hold it back. I don’t think either of us can convince that much water for too long. Once you hear any explosions, you get to safety first and you worry about anyone else later.”

“It’s risking a lot,” Sokka says. It’s not a critique, not really. It’s more a bleak commentary.

“We’ve been risking a lot ever since you took me to crack open that iceberg,” Katara counters. “Besides,” she says, voice edging on teasing as she tilts her head back, “you’re not the one with magic water powers. Listen to the expert when it comes to floods.”

Sokka laughs, small and quiet. “Yeah, yeah. Alright.” He taps his fingers on the edge of the saddle. His voice is somehow even quieter and more vulnerable when he asks, “What if I wasn’t seeing things? What if the Bandit Prince is still there?”

Katara drums her fingers on Sokka’s arm. This time, it isn’t the sea in storm but a river running under rain, threatening to overflow. Escapable danger, but danger nonetheless. “Then you try to do what you can, but you run like hell. There’s a hundred other towns like this, if it comes down to it. You’re my only brother.”

Sokka smiles crookedly and gives a light shove to her shoulder. “And your favorite.”

Katara chuckles gently. “By default, yeah.” There’s a slight clattering of metal above them, where the Freedom Fighters are waking up and getting free of their sleep piles. Katara glances and heaves herself up to sit. “I’ll distract them while you fill Aang in.”

“As you say, chieftess,” Sokka says, stretching with a jaw-cracking yawn.

Katara stands and clambers off of Appa’s saddle. She hesitates before she heads up to the trees, though.

“Hey,” she says, “stay safe.”

Sokka gives that tired laugh again. “I’ll try. You better do the same.”

Neither of them promise safety. Neither of them can.

As always, all they can do is try.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was fun! Imperialism has consequences! These kids choose to be compassionate, but everybody has to keep in mind that they have chosen that and they can choose everything but that too! Jet continues to be an asshole but it's probably the trauma and the neverending desire to do some war crimes. Iroh can relate.
> 
> I am doing my best to intelligently interact with these characters and their viewpoints. I hope I am doing them justice.
> 
> The idea of Beauh having a hoard made from items people in the crew keep giving it came from the person who keeps giving me amazing fanart, Blaiddthewolf. Here is what they made since last chapter:  
[The Triple Spirits w/ a boombox](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/765992089364201502/3spirits.jpg?width=400&height=267) (not pictured, Toph wrecking shop)  
[The Triple Spirits being creepy](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/766085015581753434/3spirits2.jpg?width=400&height=267)  
[Beauh sketches](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/766821963859230730/beauh_sketches.jpg?width=400&height=267)  
[Detailed Beauh](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/754809178857668618/767125586127749190/Beauh.jpg?width=400&height=267)
> 
> I made an Earth Kingdom song on request:  
[Tumblr link](https://zenzaaaaaaaaaaaa.tumblr.com/post/633618772200144896/yet-another-prompted-song-this-time-asking-for-an)  
[Youtube playlist link](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVijaFdLcG1yFqbRDpNDoy0INiUbWfJ6J)
> 
> And also I put the songs I've made since the first bandcamp album on [another album](https://zenza.bandcamp.com/album/no-grave-hold-my-body-songs-2-electric-boogaloo). It's entirely free unless you don't want it to be, so there's an easy way to download them if that's your style.
> 
> Yesterday sure was fun, huh. My brain feels like a fried egg. Congrats and condolences to anyone who existed with a tumblr yesterday and/or was invested in spn. I was part of the first demographic and I also had to take an online test for a class that was Zoom-proctored by a teacher sitting in a Panera. We live in a society.
> 
> I'll see you all at the next update! Or on the discord server if you're on there. The invite link for the server is on last chapter's end note and I'm pretty sure if I hyperlink one more thing my laptop will grow hands and try to strangle me.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[FAN ART] remember me (when i'm reborn)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25368157) by [wanderNavi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi)
  * [(FANART) Zuko in the Mist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26126092) by [Yeetingmeselfintosun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeetingmeselfintosun/pseuds/Yeetingmeselfintosun)


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